


The Stranger

by somebodys_dog



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/F, F/M, but here we are, idk what i'm doing or why i thought a multi-chapter fic would be a good idea
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-08-13 11:58:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 105,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7975987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somebodys_dog/pseuds/somebodys_dog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The two agents looked at each other, Nora with her brow raised, Deacon with a shrug.</p>
<p>"Danny?" She called into the little speaker, a note of disbelief in her voice. "Were you...sleeping?"</p>
<p>"What - no! Who is - is that Nora?"</p>
<p>"One and only," she answered, cheeriness brittle and a little wary.</p>
<p>"Holy shit. You're supposed to be dead!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Other Dreams, And Better

P R O L O G U E

 

 

_I am but a dream -- your dream, creature of your imagination._

 

 

 

  
  
  
This - this is how he remembers it. How he remembers her.  
  
A clean beach; salt spray over a pinkening sky; that too-big, too-wild floppy hat she has to keep pinned to her head with one hand against the ocean breeze. And her mouth wide in that kind of belly laugh that comes from a moment without self-consciousness, without inhibitions, with a pure bubble of joy. And he's so damn happy, it rings like a bell and he records it, plays it over to lull him to sleep at night, the first time he's ever heard her laugh that way. He keeps it.  
  
And she looks at him, peeling her silly oversized sunglasses off and letting the wind play waywardly with the fabric of her dress, that laugh still curling her lips into a smile, and beckons him.  
  
You wouldn't know there'd ever been an apocalypse unless, like he does, you let your hand clasp and unclasp the little bottle of Rad-X in his pocket. Not that he needs it, but she - she's got her feet in the water, basking in the strangeness of it all, in the familiarity of the ocean after all this time, after all this mess.  
  
He shakes his head, issues some tongue-in-cheek excuse and she laughs again but she's upon him in less than a minute. She's red in the cheeks and sandy in the knees and a little out of breath, but she drops to a crouch in front of him and slides those silly glasses over his slightly uneven ears.  
  
"Nick Valentine," she chides, and he doesn't object to the attention, doesn't resist his new set of specs, "you come down and enjoy yourself this minute."  
  
"I _am_ enjoying myself."  
  
"Why do I always have to twist your arm to get you to have a little fun?"  
  
"I'm having fun. G'won." He gestures out to the edge of the sea with a metallic hand, leaning his weight on the other.  
  
She heaves a dramatic sigh and plops down beside him, folding her dress over her bent knees and burying her toes in the sand. He remembers this, watches this, this simple thing - this unconscious way she roots herself in the moment. He keeps that, too.  
  
"I've never seen the beach so clean," she says, curling her fingers around her own ankles and marveling at the darkening view.  
  
"Not all of it is. Just here."  
  
"You did this?" She arches a brow at him, a confused but prepared-to-be-grateful smile already revealing her teeth.  
  
"I - might have had something to do with it. I wanted..." But he trails off, like he always does, too soon. Too stiff, too guarded. He clears his throat and glances away, pulling the sunglasses off and hooking them into his collar for safekeeping.  
  
But her air is still easy, her pleasure still radiating off her. He can feel it, like heat. Like a generator. How on earth did she keep it going?  
  
"You remember, when it would get dark, and the moon would get big, and you could hear the boats calling in the night?"  
  
He squints. Her voice is quiet, and it's a genuine question -- there's no guarantee he _will_ remember, but at the very least, with that nostalgia in her voice, he thinks he can picture it. "Sort of," is his answer as he sits up a little straighter, brushing sand off his palm and onto the knee of his trousers.  
  
"When I was little, in Chicago, the trains would always put me to sleep. I missed it so much when we moved to Boston. I thought it would be so quiet, too quiet. But then - I heard the boats. I'd never seen the ocean before. I'd been to the lake, but the ocean is just..." She trails off too, but happily. He knows that moment - when there's not a precise enough word for a feeling.  
  
He's not ungrateful for their lapse into silence. It's really the only comfortable silence he knows. Even Ellie fills the room with sound when it gets too quiet. But Nora doesn't fill space just because it's there. She's careful like that - but content like that, too. He likes that so much about her, and he's never been able to put his finger on why.  
  
"I used to be afraid of it, you know. Still am, sort of."  
  
"The ocean?" He can't help but crack a grin at this, lifting a metal finger to scoot the brim of his hat a little higher so he can see her better, judge the joke she may or may not be spinning. "I don't believe that," he decides, shaking his head a little.  
  
"It's true!" She gives him a smack to the back of the shoulder without any force behind it, and he chuckles, and even as she tells him not to laugh she's laughing, too.  
  
"I've seen you take down a 'Lurk close quarters," he states simply, falling into the habit of fumbling in his pocket for that ever-present, wrinkled pack of smokes. His fingers hit the bottle first, and he withdraws it, giving the pills inside a little rattle. "Here."  
  
"I've had one," she starts, but he's never taken her shit, and she only smiles and opens her hand palm-up when he insists with another, firmer, " _here_." When he shakes out a capsule for her, she tosses it back obediently and dry-swallows like the pro she is. But she still makes that face. And he smiles. That silly face.  
  
That done, he pockets the bottle again and retrieves his cigarettes, shaking one to the opened square on one side and offered the protruding filter to her automatically. Just as habitually, she takes it, waiting patiently for a light as she continues to explain.  
  
"It's not like the lake. If you had all day --" she laughs a little "-- maybe two, and enough determination, you could walk around it. It had borders. But the ocean is like..." Her eyes return to the last hint of purple above the horizon, and she chews her lip, searching for the right words. Always careful. "There could be a whole different world on the other side of that. Hell, there might not even _be_ another side to it."  
  
"Don't tell me you're buying Tom's the-earth-is-flat theory," he teases, but his expression shifts into a frown when his digging finger can't find another cigarette in the crumpled cardboard box. Damn. Did he really smoke that much? But then, he's not the only one who smokes them anymore.  
  
"Here," she offers once she realizes what's happened, holding the last cigarette out to him without a second thought. He can hardly stand it. He doesn't even _need_ to smoke; it's just some...something leftover. He can't feel nicotine. He just feels...smoke. And here she is feeding his habit - his stupid habit - just because she knows him. She smirks when he waves her away and retrieves his flip-lighter anyway, opening and lighting it with a practiced jerk of his wrist. He lifts his other hand - his better hand - to shield the new flame from the breeze before it flickers out. She takes a few puffs with the end of the cigarette dipped in the heat, sucking down the red bud until it truly caught, then pulls back and lets the excess smoke swirl into the night-catching air.  
  
He likes the way she smokes - like she's on a mission. Like there's a secret at the end of every cigarette. Like she has a bone to pick with each fleck of tobacco. He likes too much about her, probably.  
  
"No," she answers finally, with a smoke-filled smile. "I've got myself a pre-war education." She chuckles, and this gives him permission to do so as well. They both, technically, have celebrated pre-war backgrounds. And what good does it do them here, now? It keeps them alive, she would say, and he can hear her voice so clear in his head it startles him. She has homesteads and settlements all across the Commonwealth, and now she lives there, too?  
  
"I just mean - I mean the world, the way it is...we don't even know what's there anymore. If there's anything there, anymore. I hear things as far west as California. The caravans sometimes mention Louisiana but - but beyond that? What if it's all just a bigger Glowing Sea?"  
  
"Ah, the Reds are still around," he dismisses airily, and she pops him upside the back of his head with her palm. It's playful, and he doesn't mind, but it's a scolding also.  
  
" _The Reds_ ," she repeats with a scoff as he adjusts the hat she knocked askew. She takes another drag of that cigarette, like she has something to prove. "What does that even mean anymore? You and me are probably the only people who even have context for that. But that submarine, that poor man..." She frowns at this memory, and he stiffens a little, too. It was a hard day down there with that man and his ghouls. They don't talk about it much.  
  
"That's as far as I've ever heard about, and that's still on our shores. The rest of the world could be gone, I mean, we don't _really_ know. That's a big unknown. That's the ocean - even more, now. That's not scary to you?" And now she's looking at him and those dark eyes accept no bullshit, no half-hearted answers and no beating around the bush. She is a fierce arrow of honesty and he's pierced, and when you're hit like that, you don't have any choice but to bleed your colors true and loud.  
  
"It's...not really something I've thought about," he admits, and there's a touch of shame in his voice. "I guess - well, Boston has kind of been my whole world, and I didn't really..." He shrugs, as if that's any way to end that kind of statement. She looks at him dead in the eye, coolly collected for a moment or two and he worries, bizarrely, that he's disappointed her somehow.  
  
But then she's smiling, and there's something... _there_. He catches it sometimes, on the edge of her face, like a shadow that creeps in when she burns a little dimmer. It's rare, these moments when it sneaks up on her - on him, too. She's normally burning so damn bright no shadow can survive near her.  
  
And then she's leaning a little closer and he can only stare as that dusty-colored arm of hers stretches forward with a half-ashed cigarette held delicately in her fingers. She presses the end of the filter against his lips so casually, like his processors aren't whirring and his heat sinks aren't ready to fry. Like he can't taste the salt on her fingers and smell the dirt and tobacco and sand on her skin. And what can he do? He takes a drag, and she watches most of it filter out through the open side of his neck.  
  
"As worlds go," she says, and that something she has, that... _something_ , nearly stops him dead when she puts the cigarette back in her own mouth, cool and casual like he's not sitting here ready to burst, "Boston's not a bad one to have."  
  
  
  
All this hasn't happened yet. Perhaps it won't. Or perhaps it will be different. That's the funny thing about fate, and time. And when you're out of time - and outside of it - the only thing ahead of you is the great big unknown.  
  
  
Nick woke, and it wasn't really waking -- when his mind buzzed too loud and he couldn't stand looking at his own cramped chicken scratch anymore, he idled and let his body fall into a less power-consuming stasis. Coming out of it was like coming out of a dream - he thought. He was pretty sure he remembered that. But whatever happened, it was only half-processed. Which, he supposed, is what a dream really is, anyway.  
  
The office had that empty feeling whenever Ellie left, and he knew for sure she'd gone when he straightened up from his slump over his desk and he felt the rustle of his trench coat over his shoulders. He'd told her before, he didn't really get cold, but that never stopped her from worrying. There was a stubbed out cigarette next to a pile of unsmoked ash in the little ceramic dish by his hand that punctuated the point in a way only Ellie could. How could you scold someone without even being there? She made an art of it.  
  
He let his chair meander backwards on rusty wheels as he stood, stretching his arms before tucking them into the sleeves of his coat. He didn't need to open the door to know it was night. He didn't need to hear the patter on the tin roof to know it was raining. None of this was detective work, he had to admit -- he had sensory receptors in and out the wazoo; little could escape his notice or estimation. Or, well, not a great deal, anyway.  
  
The woman on his doorstep, half-shadowed in the pink neon flickering of his sign, that was a surprise. But there she was, all brown and battle-worn and legs until Sunday. He knew her immediately, though it was so much easier to picture her in cobbled-together leather armor and a little more blue. But that smoke - that was a staple. The rosy bud of the cigarette hung down at her hip where her hand lazily flicked ash onto the alley floor. The smoke curled up and around the blinking light and it brought her smile with it. Something got stuck, some subroutine hit a wall, and he just stood there doing his best impression of a door.  
  
"Hey Valentine," she greeted him, reaching into a patched bag at her side and retrieving a little bundle of papers, which she held out to his chest, "I've got a case for you."


	2. Dreams, Visions, Fictions

_We all have a face  
That we hide away forever  
And we take them out to show ourselves  
When everyone has gone  
Some are satin, some are steel  
Some are silk, and some are leather  
They're the faces of The Stranger  
But we love to try them on_

 

 

 

"You know, Boss, I'm all for ops-preparation, but do you think the whole standing out in the rain bit is totally necessary?"  
  
Deacon stamped his boots against the broken pavement once or twice in a childish attempt to induce a little warmth, the leather of his jacket creaking as his arms folded all the more tightly in front of him. There wasn't any venom in his voice, however actually annoyed he may have been. At this point - at this _time_ , in this place - he'd wait out here as long as she needed.  
  
He just hadn't really expected her to need _this_ long. It didn't sit well with him.  
  
"Sorry," she choked out through a kind of self-deprecating chuckle. "I know I'm being an idiot." She was on her tenth attempt at bringing her lighter to life, both hands shaking too much to accomplish the task with any longevity, and the cigarette between her lips threatening to vibrate out of her grip at any moment.  
  
"Well so long as you know," he teased, unfolding his arms and gently relieving her of the zippo, succeeding in coaxing a flame from it and holding it steady for her, a palm cupped above it to shield it from the rain. He didn't mention the shaking - he _wouldn't_ mention it. He'd let them both keep the pretense of it being from the cold.  
  
"I'm just--"  
  
"I know," Deacon cut her off, his tone somehow simultaneously sharp and gentle. She didn't have to tell him anything, didn't have to explain anything. And he wasn't going to watch her force herself to relive anything, either. Not here, not now. "It's a good night for stargazing, gotta brush up on my astrology anyhow." He smiled up toward the cloud-covered sky, not a single pinprick of light in sight.  
  
"Astronomy," she laughed, sucking down a grateful lung-full of smoke so intensely nearly half the cigarette crackled into ash at once.  
  
"What's the difference?" As if he didn't know. But he was still grinning. It was comforting, in its way. She needed easy banter right now.  
  
"One's a science."  
  
"Are you telling me you've run through the scientific method on this stuff?" He clicked his tongue in mock-admonishment, shaking his head. " _Such_ an Aquarius."  
  
She laughed again, and it was easy on the ears. It was genuine, however tentative, and he was glad of it. She hadn't been laughing for a long time, and now that he could hear it again in earnest, it was the sum total of anything he wanted to hear. God knew she deserved it.  
  
A silence passed between them for the time it took her to burn that cigarette down to a nub, and she held it in her fingers even after its little cherry of light died out. She stared at the ground, the puddle building around her boots, and he stared at her. He hated it like this, hated her having to be like this. He understood, of course. But that didn't make it any easier. It was simpler for him, he supposed. If your entire life is a card-house of lies, knocking it down doesn’t hold much weight. But she was so damned honest. And now she was trying to lie and he could see it twisting her up. She wasn't good at it, either.  
  
"I fucked up, D," she said at last, rolling the dead filter between her fingertips in idle nervousness. "I did a shitty thing."  
  
"There's no way you could have known, Bullseye."  
  
"Oh, don't..." She heaved a shaky little sigh and looked up at him from under the brim of her soggy cap, smiling in a sad little way. "I - it's okay. I mean, it's not okay. But...it's shitty. I did a shitty thing. I have to - I should have - I should have told someone. That's exactly what he's going to say to me and he's going to be right."  
  
"Are you telling me you would have wanted _anyone_ following you there?" This time his tone was unapologetically firm. She didn't get to beat herself up for this. He wasn't going to let that happen. He wasn't going to let her turn into that person.  
  
"...no." Nora's voice was quiet, noncommittal. But she knew it was true. They both did. Nobody she cared about, nobody she thought even remotely fondly about - she wouldn't have wanted that.  
  
"And you think nobody would have come after you? You really think _he_ wouldn't? His whole life is chasing after people." He frowned, tucking his arms against his chest again with an honest little shiver of his own. "Look," he began again, voice hitching for just a moment of hesitation, "no bullshit."  
  
Her eyes snapped up then, narrowed in that piercing way she had. It gave Deacon one more moment of hesitation. He wasn't allowed to say that and follow it with a lie. It was just one of their rules, and that look held him to it. He didn't know if he _could_ lie to that look.  
  
Well, no, of course he could. But he didn't want to.  
  
"Not everybody is gonna understand no matter what you tell them," he continued at last, "probably least of all the truth. But that doesn't mean you made the wrong decision. Sometimes all the choices are bad."  
  
She seemed to consider this, chewing her lip thoughtfully for another quiet moment.  
  
When he couldn't stand it any longer, he spoke up again, breaking her momentary downward spiral with his usual, terrible humor. "I'm saying we went sailing. Fell over the edge of the earth, had to hitch a ride with some space dudes to get back. Took the scenic route. Mars was nice."  
  
Nora laughed again, and he drank it in like sunlight. She'd become something like a sister to him over time, and after this last year, it was cemented. They were a family unit baptized in fire and bullets. It was...difficult, admitting that at first. He didn't like to need anybody. He told himself he still _didn't_ need anybody. But here he was, holding her hand through her first wobbly steps. It hadn't even occurred to him not to do it.  
  
"You sure you want that to get to Tom? You know what it's like when he gloats."  
  
"Mm," he pondered this dramatically for a moment giving a curt, committed nod. "Sure. I just won't tell him anything about the Mars Men, sworn to secrecy and all that. Drive him crazy. Well, crazier."  
  
"Don't chase him too far up a wall. We need him every once in a while." She laughed a single note without any humor and flicked the butt of her cigarette into the haze of rain. As if they didn’t need Tinker and his trinkets every second of every op they ever ran. As if he hadn't saved their lives a thousand times over.  
  
With a short, hard swallow, she finally slammed the base of her palm into the little intercom's call button, perhaps a bit harder than she meant to, but certainly with no force the bit of machinery hadn't seen already. A few moments passed before a voice crackled into life at the other end, sounding just a little annoyed at the late hour.  
  
"Wha- Who's there?" As guard machismo went, it wasn't the best.  
  
"Father Christmas," Deacon replied immediately, earning him a soft punch in the arm from his partner.  
  
"Oh ha ha," came the sardonic, tinny reply, "thanks for waking-- bothering me with that. Guess you can just stay out there for the night."  
  
The two agents looked at each other, Nora with her brow raised, Deacon with a shrug.  
  
"Danny?" She called into the little speaker, a note of disbelief in her voice. "Were you...sleeping?"  
  
"What - no! Who is - is that Nora?"  
  
"One and only," she answered, cheeriness brittle and a little wary.  
  
"Holy shit. You're supposed to be dead!"  
  
"Nice to see you too, buddy," Deacon chimed in, bristling under the inconvenience of being made to wait in the rain far longer than he considered necessary.  
  
"I got better," Nora answered, again giving her partner a playful, albeit warning little shove.  
  
"Jesus. Does Piper know you're here? Where the heck have you been?"  
  
Nora grimaced. "Can we save the catching up for when we're not about to drown out here, Danny?"  
  
"Oh - oh yeah, just, hang on--" there was a hurried fumbling from the other end of the intercom, and the sound of something falling "shit, uh - let me just..."  
  
At last, the hulking steel of Diamond City's gate creaked rumbled into life, hinges squeaking with rust and damp. The pair outside ducked under as soon as there was enough room, and Deacon shook himself like a dog on the dry side, sending spray nearly straight out from his body in all directions. For her part, Nora gave a shiver and another little chuckle, snatching the newsboy cap from her head and snapping it in the air a few times to free it of the better part of rain it had soaked up.  
  
"Jesus," came Danny's voice as he struggled out from behind the counter, all decorum lost, rifle hanging haphazardly at his side. "It's really you! Where - we all thought--"  
  
"Yeah," she cut him off, bracing a hand against his leather-clad shoulder. "Sorry about that. Things got...hectic."  
  
"She's being modest. Alien abduction - you should've seen her take on all those little green men with nothing but a disposable razor. The pink kind."  
  
The guard gave Deacon his best bewildered face - a particular talent for Danny - and Nora intercepted before more trouble could be started. "Listen, Danny, nobody knows I'm here yet," she began, shooting her partner a barbed look, "it's - sort of a surprise. So if you can just keep it between us, for now..."  
  
"Jeeze - I mean, yeah, I just - this is gonna be kinda hard to keep under wraps."  
  
She couldn't help but smile at his put-upon expression. Poor kid. He'd given a lot to the city, what little he had to give. He was a simple man with a simple life and here she was, tasking him with the unbelievably complicated. "I know, sorry." She paid him a pained but pleading look, pinching her shoulders up in a "nothing-you-can-do" sort of shrug. "I'll let everyone know soon. You don't have to sit on it for long."  
  
"Yeah, okay," Danny breathed a little relief into the air before seeming to remember himself, yanking his rifle to the more respectable in-hand and at-the-ready position. "Uh - I guess you should go in then, huh? Everyone will be awful glad to see you."  
  
"Thanks, kid." She stood on tip-toe to deliver a peck to his forehead and left him standing there in the wake of it, turning red at the ears, while the rain-soaked pair scurried into the city proper.  
  
They splashed their way past the silent office of the press and into the cover of the noodle stand. Deacon took up a stool immediately, making a show of his displeasure with the weather and walking combined. " _Takahashi_ ," he whined, spinning his seat childishly to face the bot, "I'm _starving_ , Bullseye never feeds me. You can hook a buddy up, right?"  
  
Nora scoffed, taking up a place beside her churlish partner and folding her arms over the countertop. "You saying some 'Claw snuck up and ate those Fancy Lads out of my pack last night?"  
  
In a gesture fit for the worst kind of Shakespearean actor, Deacon clapped a hand over his heart and struck a pained expression behind those ever-present sunglasses. "You wound me," he scolded, turning his gaze back to the protectron-gone-barkeep as though that was any place from which to coax sympathy, "you hearing this? Next she'll accuse me of --" he gasped for the ridiculousness of it "-- _lying_!"  
  
An elbow connected softly with his ribs, and he put on another display of pain and betrayal. Deacon laughed and held up two fingers while shoving his other hand in his pocket to scrounge for a handful of caps. "Two of your finest, my good bot."  
  
"No," Nora cut in, turning away from the incoming bowls of noodles and letting her eyes dart treacherously over to the mouth of that alley, tinged with the neon pink of that familiar advertisement. "Not for me."  
  
Deacon frowned at this, and he shifted in order to follow her gaze, though he needn't have bothered. He knew well enough where her mind was going, and how fast it was running ahead of her to get there. She was going to drive herself bonkers that way. "Don't think you'll need your strength?"  
  
"Don't need to throw up on his doorstep," she countered.  
  
"Wow." Suddenly the humor was gone from him, and he swiveled in his seat again to lock eyes on her. He might not even have existed, the way her concentration was throwing itself across the empty space of the market square. "That's an image." More out of habit than anything, his eyes darted from one shadowy guard to the next as a shift in patrols occurred, someone relieving someone else of the late shift and starting the graveyard. He could see Bullseye doing the same, and couldn't stamp down a little pride. Even like this, worried as she was, she was alert. Astute. Even after...well. She was a tough cookie, to say the least.  
  
"You sure you don't want backup on this one? You seem..." He didn't really have the heart to finish that sentence, however kindly he could think to do it. She was still on point, it was just...different. A little more harried, more urgent. If he was the kind of person to admit to fear, he'd say it scared him a little.  
  
"No, I think - I should do it alone. I have to...it's better that way, I think."  
  
"Your call, boss," he relented, though with obvious reluctance. He would have gone with her through the thickest of it if she'd have him. But he was trying to respect her choice to go it alone. He understood it, at least, even if he didn't like it.  
  
At her deepening frown, Deacon leaned forward, nudging his partner gently with a shoulder. "You're gonna be fine." She didn't often need reassurance, and he could feel how rusty he was as a result. How did you comfort the eternally calm and collected?  
  
She gave a hollow little laugh, twisting her hat between her fists in a building nervous energy. "Yeah," was her empty response, and there was no sense of security in it. In his heart of hearts (of hearts, of hearts -- had to keep enough layers there), he wasn't sure he believed it, either. This wasn't the kind of situation where anyone got through being "fine." Didn't help when nobody even started there.  
  
"Wanna wait until morning? The Dugout--"  
  
"No," she spoke up more firmly this time, screwing her still-damp cap firmly back onto her head, "I think I've just gotta do it quick, like a Band-Aid." She kicked herself off her seat and onto her feet, heaving a deep breath of nervous preparation.  
  
"What's a Band-Aid?"  
  
"What? Oh, it's like this little piece of--" But she caught the hint of a smirk behind those sunglasses, and the hand she'd been using to illustrate the idea in gestures curled into a fist to sock him on the arm, even as a chuckle was rising in her throat. "Jerk."  
  
"You love me," he pouted, rubbing the offended bicep with overdramatic care.  
  
"Lucky you." She let her punching hand fall to his, giving his fingers a little squeeze as the smile faded from her face.  
  
"Hey," Deacon's voice was soft again, and he looked up at her from over the rim of his dark glasses, "it's all gonna be fine. I'll be here when you get back." With this, he took up the bowl Takahashi had prepared for him at last, spinning again in his stool to rest his back against the edge of the counter. "Alone," he added, snapping the bound chopsticks in two, "with my noodles."  
  
"Poor baby," Nora supplied with a laugh before straightening her pack over her shoulder and marching off into the dark of the city. For a moment, he could see her hesitate, silhouetted against the neon glow of the arrow that hung just outside the mouth of the alley. Then she was gone, disappearing between rusted buildings. He sighed a little, shoving a healthy helping of noodles into his cheek to free up his mouth for a comment.  
  
"Whatcha think, Tak? There gonna be fireworks at this dysfunctional family reunion?"  
  
" _Nan-ni shimasho-ka_?"  
  
"Yeah." There was a small spray of hot broth. "Me, too."  


  
  
  
It was a few moments before Nick could reel his senses in enough to even wrap a metal hand around that sheaf of papers, and still he couldn't stop gaping at the figure in front of him. If he had a heart, it would have stopped, despite the noisy buzz of his suddenly overloaded processors. He never really had trouble with the whole "seeing is believing" concept before -- he'd never experienced a hallucination; his sensory detection merely provided empirical data. But this -- but her...  
  
"You, uh, gonna let me in or is this your way of saying I need a shower?"  
  
The glow of those yellow eyes flickered for a moment in some kind of miniature reboot, and the fact that she was standing in a downpour finally registered. Nick stepped back quickly, gesturing with the arm that now held the paper bundle toward the inside of the rather cramped space.  
  
She shuffled in gratefully, trying to gather herself into the smallest space possible so as to avoid dripping on anything important. The office was, just as she always remembered, littered with paper and folders, scraps of notes in Nick's cramped and hurried hands, stray books Ellie hadn't yet attempted to wrangle. It smelled like smoke and parchment, and the nostalgia of it all hit Nora hard, like an arrow through the chest. It was such a physical sensation that a hand reflexively reached up to latch onto the front of her coat, as if attempting to still the flutter that rose within her by force.  
  
"You - uh - all right?"  
  
Of all the things he could have said to her, Nick supposed this probably wasn't the most eloquent, but it was the most honest. And that seemed to resonate enough with her to give the woman pause. She tucked some of the hair that had been plastered to her cheek behind her ear - short, he noted, so much shorter than when he'd last seen her; it barely brushed her chin - and looked up at him, now in better light. Their view of one another was stark and plain now, and they both registered little changes in one another.  
  
The new scar on her lip. The new band securing a handful of wires to the column in his neck. A collection of freckles the sun had drawn out on her cheeks. A fresh patch under one lapel of his coat.  
  
And then - all the things that were the same. So much the same. Painfully easy to project against perfect memory.  
  
"I - yeah," Nora managed at last, folding her arms across her waist against the dry cold of the room. "Sorry," she added, glancing down to the puddle she was creating at her feet.  
  
"Forget about it," was his answer when he realized what she meant. "Lemme take your coat."  
  
She didn't resist as he helped to ease her arms out of the garment, and she set her pack out of the way in the corner. He hung the jacket up on the rickety coat stand, then, almost instinctively, removed his own to drape around her. She tried to object in that odd, modest way of hers, and he just shook his head. Never did take her shit.  
  
"Getcha anything?"  
  
She couldn't help but smile. It was awkward, sure, and difficult but - so familiar. Like home.  
  
"Still got that whiskey?"  
  
"Have a seat," Nick nodded to the plush - well, as plush as anything could be nowadays - chair in front of his desk before disappearing momentarily into the back partition of the little building. He returned with a glass two-fingers full, setting it lightly in her cupped hands before depositing the papers next to another pile of his own. He leaned against the front edge of his desk, half-seated, and simply watched her while she took in the warmth of the drink and settled into herself a little more.  
  
"Lookin' at me awful hard there," she noted at last, offering him a weak smile.  
  
"Just wonderin' if I'm having my first dream."  
  
She laughed, and though it was small, it was so earnest - it hit him like a ball of lead lodged in his chest and sat there, hot and pointed. Nora gestured to herself in a somewhat expansive way, as if to indicate the entirety of her rather shabby appearance. "More like a nightmare, maybe."  
  
"Nah," he replied, fishing into the pocket of his slacks to fetch a battered pack of cigarettes. Sinking into habits so old they were part of his nature - their natures, maybe - he shook one to the opening of the little box and offered it to her. She took it gratefully, and he shook his head just so. Just as heavy a smoker as he was. Always had been.  
  
"Light?" The flip-lighter was open and boasting a proud little flame even as the word left him, and she leaned forward to catch it on the end of her cigarette.  
  
"Thanks," she managed after a first, deep breath of smoke. She watched him tuck his cigarette into the corner of his mouth after lighting up, and they sat in another moment or two of quiet - his arms folded over his front, smoke blowing through his nostrils and drifting up through the open spaces under his jaw; she with whiskey glass in one hand, now almost empty, and cigarette in the other. It was...too familiar. Too easy. How many nights had they spent like this? Just quiet, just thinking, smoking, drinking - hashing out case details or laughing good naturedly at Ellie's latest lecture.  
  
"So." And it was Nick who broke the silence this time, finally plucking his cigarette free between thumb and forefinger, blowing the last bit of smoke politely above her head. "We gonna address the pachyderm at this party?"  
  
She chuckled, downing the last of her whiskey like a woman seeking courage anywhere it might be offered. "Can I interest you in a second helping of pretending nothing happened?"  
  
The smile on his face had an ache behind it, but he bowed his head slightly in agreement. "Sure, sure. How 'bout them Demolishers?"  
  
"Moe hasn't actually revived a team, has he?" She looked almost fearful at the idea, and he couldn't help but chuckle.  
  
"Not for lack of trying. Even tried recruiting here at the office."  
  
"You?"  
  
"Ellie."  
  
Nora couldn't stifle another laugh at this, and she deposited the empty glass on the corner of the desk before nerves or forgetfulness or the first taste of alcohol in far too long caused her to drop it. "She give him a talking to about the morals of blood sports?"  
  
A mild grin cracked under the shadow of that beat up fedora, and Nick simply shook his head. "Took the safe way out. Said Piper'd make both their lives hell if she found out."  
  
"Ha!" And now there was a grin on her face, too. "Bet that got him out of here quick." There was a nostalgic little sigh before she pieced together a part of this statement that hadn't initially processed, and she raised a brow over a curiously pleased expression. "Ellie and Piper finally?"  
  
"Way I heard, Nat shoved them both in the print room and locked the door until they finally talked to each other. Said there was a lot of stammering, but they got there in the end."  
  
The way Nora's face softened in that wistful sort of way nearly tore him in two. He knew her, knew she couldn't have possibly _wanted_ to be gone so long, but...  
  
"Looks like I've missed a lot." And this thought seemed to sober her immediately. She took another nervous drag of smoke and he watched the way she smoldered the thing to ash in a handful of seconds. Always smoking like she was running out of time. "Nick..."  
  
He stiffened under the sound of his name. She floundered for a moment or two with words she couldn't put into any sensible order. "Is he - where--"  
  
"He's upstairs," Nick supplied before she could twist herself up enough to drown. "Sleeping. Ellie shacked up with Piper like she is, figured he could just have the room. Not like I need it."  
  
The pain in her face finally broke whatever dam she'd erected in front of that flood of emotions, and tears welled up hot and furious in her eyes. "He's here?" Nora's voice was a cracked whisper, and she might as well have cut him. He couldn't stand it. "He's - oh. You kept..."  
  
"'Course I did," he answered sharply, perhaps with a little more force than he'd wanted, but with at least as much as he deserved. "Think I'd do anything different?" It was a cheap jab, he knew, but he was entitled to a little anger, a little hurt. And now, as the novelty and newness of her was wearing off, that sizzling sense of betrayal was burning its way to the surface.  
  
"No! No," she assured him desperately, depositing her spent cigarette in an ash tray he was already holding out for her. "I didn't mean - I don't - I just didn't expect..." She drew in a shaky breath to steady herself, fingers clenching and unclenched against the fabric of his coat. "Can I see him?"  
  
The way it was practically a plea - like she needed his permission. If he needed to breathe, he wouldn't have been able to for a moment. No one did guilt like Nora. And suddenly he felt a little ashamed. He didn't know the whole story - didn't know any of it, really. And there was an ache in her that was palpable, a longing and a sense of disappointment in herself.  
  
"Nora..." There weren't words appropriate enough for the situation. There was nothing he could say. So he stubbed out his own cigarette and offered a hand out to her. She took it, unflinchingly as she ever had been at his metal fingers, and he helped heave her out of her seat before leading her up the little twisty set of stairs. He could feel her shaking before they were even halfway up, her grip tightening on him, her breath catching.  
  
And there he was. Red hair tussled with sleep, curled up on his side with his back to them. Breathing so soundly. It was such a simple scene, and it seemed to poke a hole in Nora's entire world.  
  
"Oh," she breathed, barely audible. She took a hesitant step toward the bed before catching herself, looking back to Nick. He merely nodded, folding his arms again and leaning a shoulder against the doorway. That she thought she needed to ask him - to see her own _son_...  
  
He knew then, he would realize later, that something had happened. Something had gone wrong. But at the moment, he could only watch as a mother reached the edge of her son's bed, uncontrollably shaking hand hovering above his lanky arm for a long pause before daring to settle against the fabric of the blanket covering him. Her world burst. Tears were coming now with wild abandon, though she forced herself into silence. Even now, even after so much time, she was thinking of him in the smallest ways. She didn't want to wake him. Like he wouldn't have given the world to see her right then.  
  
"Oh, Nick." And now he realized she'd been looking around the room. What had once been Ellie's space had become unquestionably Shaun's. A repaired ham radio was cluttering the top of a small dresser, salvaged posters and strange technical diagrams were hung on the walls. Gadgets in various states of completion and deconstruction were scattered across a shelf, an open drawer, beneath the bed. God, he'd always been so smart.  
  
"Nick," she managed again, lifting her hand to wipe her now considerably wetter face. "Oh, Nick. Thank you. I'm so - _thank you_."  
  
He felt his whole body pinch towards his center. How was he supposed to parse simultaneous anger and pity and that - that light in him, that mirror that reflected her... _something_ , whenever she was near. He dipped his head in response. What could he say? What words could properly convey what it had meant to him, what it had meant to _her_?  
  
She looked on the verge of speaking again what the lithe figure under her hand began to stir. The pair of them froze as Shaun blinked himself out of sleep, craning his neck to stare blearily up at the face hovering over him, streaked with dirt and tear tracks.  
  
"...Mom?"  
  
Nick could have sworn he heard her heart break. Funny thing, such a small person able to wield such ridiculous strength. But it didn't surprise him. How many times had he experienced it for himself?  
  
"Hey, kiddo."  
  
And then the boy was upright in bed. He stared, wide-eyed at his mother for a moment that seemed to stretch into forever. Both adults were again frozen in fear - his reaction, Nick knew all too well, could very well be the death of her. Nora wasn't an easy woman to put down, but that little boy could kill her with a word.  
  
But then he was on her, arms wrapped around her middle and face buried into her shoulder. Nora sat stock-still, face a picture of shock melting into relief. "I'm so glad," came the muffled voice against Nick's borrowed coat, " _I'm so glad_."  
  
And her arms were around him in an instant, gathering him up practically into her lap, pressing her face against the crown of his head and letting the sobs come without restraint. There may have been an attempted apology in there somewhere, Nick was sure he heard her try to form some semblance of a sentence, but the pair had always had some otherworldly communication between them. Shaun was...well, unique. And so was his mother. Neither of them really needed to speak, Nick supposed. They both had always just...known.  
  
He watched mother and son cling to each other for dear life for a few moments longer, choking back laughter and tears and the both of them shaking with a fragility that he had never before seen in either. At last, he cleared his throat as politely as he could, and Nora's face lifted, blotched and unreadable. "Sorry, I--"  
  
"No." He held up a hand to stop her there, shaking his head. He wasn't going to let her do that yet. He wasn't sure he _wanted_ any apologies. He didn't know if he could accept them. He was lost, which wasn't unfamiliar territory around this woman, but that didn't mean he had to like it.  
  
"Are you leaving?" Shaun was looking up now, too, his expression desperate. "Please don't go."  
  
Nick would have sworn he felt his own heart break, if he'd had one.  
  
"Oh, honey." A silent look passed between Nick and Nora, and he shrugged a little helplessly. There was that faint, aching smile under the shadow of his hat again, and he pushed himself off the doorway in order to prepare his retreat.  
  
"I'll be downstairs. You two..." He trailed off ineffectually, but Nora met him with a grateful smile, and again there was that twist in his gut, that hot ball of lead in his chest seizing and burning.  
  
He left them there to bask in each other, plodding back to his desk and flopping into his chair again. Before he really registered what he was doing, there was another cigarette in his mouth and smoke was already curling toward the ceiling, mixing with the haze of the dim lamplight. Leave it to Nora to pull his life apart in an instant. She'd always been good at that.  
  
Distractedly, his gaze fell on the papers she'd provided him earlier, and he leaned forward to give them a tired once-over. Time passed. The night grew darker. He burned through another three cigarettes before tearing himself away from the package of documents, face screwed up in what might have been disbelief. When he rose to the top of the stairs to see if he couldn't squeeze in a question or two, however, the picture in the room was quiet and comfortable. They lay on the bed, asleep and still clinging to one another, both tucked under the expanse of his patched coat. It was strangely domestic, and it left a bittersweet taste in his mouth.  
  
Quietly, he stepped forward and tucked the collar of his coat a little higher on the pair of them before gently relieving Nora of her cap, still slightly damp from the rain. She stirred just enough to crack one sleepy eye at him, and he hushed her back down before she could fully wake. "You sleep," he insisted, "we'll talk in the morning."  
  
Absently, his hand swept briefly over Shaun's hair in a paternal sort of way, and he caught himself in the middle of the act. Something that had come so naturally after so long with just him and the boy. And here, in front of his mother, it made him feel like a thief.  
  
He lingered in the doorway for a brief moment after retreating again, glowing eyes settling on the pair of shapes beneath their makeshift blanket. Every part of him that had wanted to revel in her return, and every part that thereafter wanted to scold her - to demand answers - whirred into a hush. Here, at the sight of them reunited, he was impotent against it all. He knew he'd take her answers, whatever ones she provided. He'd find a way to settle with them. The realization was like drinking battery acid. Sure it didn't hurt him, but it burned him all the way down to his core.  
  
A damn year. She'd been gone a _whole damn year_ , without so much as a word of warning, and now that she was back, the most he could feel was grateful. He sucked back a bitter laugh, descending the stairs again to settle helplessly into his chair. And he'd help her, too, he knew. With whatever mess she had brought him. He wanted so badly to be angry, to be steaming on the surface like he knew he deserved to be. But now, all he wanted was to know how she was, to know that she was all right, to know - he gave another, hollow chuckle - that she was _staying_.  
  
Nick the synth. Ha. "More like Nick the spaniel," he muttered to himself, gathering the papers again to browse through them. Like a kicked dog.  
  
And yet, for a brief moment, knowing she was upstairs, safe and asleep - he smiled.


	3. Only A Vision, A Dream

_We all fall in love  
But we disregard the danger  
Though we share so many secrets  
There are some we never tell_

 

 

“You sure about this, Nicky?”  
  
Piper’s voice is trying to be sincere, but she can’t hide the flutter of excitement that’s been buoying her all morning. Nick just lets slip a lighthearted chuckle.  
  
“Why? You havin’ second thoughts?”  
  
Ellie’s laugh announces her descent down the little set of stairs, hefting the last of the small boxes of belongings in her arms. She only has three, and none of them weigh much at all, but in a fit of chivalry Piper insists on carrying the brunt of the meager load. “I think Nat would kill us both if either of us changed our minds, now.”  
  
When she hits the landing, she leans in to plant a chaste peck on Piper’s cheek, and the simple honesty of the gesture brings a flush to the reporter’s cheeks.  
  
“Nah, you know me,” Piper’s tone chimes with slight embarrassment, but mostly anticipation, “I never quit when I’m ahead.” With that, she hoists her lot of the haul out the open door, making her way toward the half-press-half-house the two now call home.  
  
Ellie pauses in front of Nick, smiling at him a little too knowingly for his taste. “You _are_ sure about this, Nick? Piper’s said a hundred times he can stay, and I certainly don’t mind.”  
  
A metal hand is waving away her suggestion before she can even finish. “Three’s gonna be a tight fit in there. Four’s too much. Kid probably doesn’t wanna get caught in a henhouse anyhow.”  
  
The pursed-lip, cocked-brow expression that slides over his secretary’s face tells him she sees straight through this bit of transparency. And then it saddens at the edges, and he can’t stand that. Right now, he doesn’t want to be read so thoroughly. He turns his head away, just in time to catch the new, small figure in the light of the doorway.  
  
Shaun has a box of his own, looking considerably more packed than any of Ellie’s. Springs, sprockets, and various bits of unidentifiable hardware threaten to spill over the sides, wires already tangling in his fingers. He wears a wide-eyed, slightly apprehensive expression. He’s seen the office before, of course, but never for any prolonged amount of time. Now, he is looking upon his new home for the first time. It’s a big change, Nick supposes, even in its small way.  
  
“Hey, kiddo,” Ellie greets him, shifting her box against her hip to free up a hand so that she can ruffle his hair. Shaun laughs quietly and only halfheartedly ducks away from this friendly gesture. Such a good-natured little guy. For some reason, it makes Nick remember nausea. He _is_ nervous, no matter what he tells the happy couple. “You’ve got clean blankets upstairs. Did the best I could with the mattress.”  
  
Shaun beams a little nervously up at her, bobbing his head in appreciation. “Thanks, Miss Perkins.” She laughs a little at his formality, and gives him a brief, sideways squeeze of a hug before heading for the door at last.  
  
“Keep him out of trouble for me, kiddo!” She calls over her shoulder, and then she is gone, and it’s just Nick and the kid. For all the time he’s spent with the boy before, suddenly the air is thick with awkwardness.  
  
The pair watch each other in strange silence for a few moments before Nick finally speaks, habitually fingering the cigarette pack that sits discarded on his desk. “Set your things down, stay a while.” He tries for a disarming smile, but he can’t match the sunshine dawning on the boy’s face. He could have wielded good nature like a weapon, if he wanted.  
  
Shaun sets his box out of the way on the floor, casting curious eyes over every inch of the small space. When his gaze settles on the crowded desks, he cocks his head. “Miss Perkins still works here, right, Mr. Valentine?”  
  
He can’t help but chuckle. “Kid, we’re roommates now. Figure that qualifies us for a first name basis. Yeah,” he adds, thumbing a cigarette out of the pack and nearly lifting it to his lips before catching himself - you weren’t supposed to smoke around kids, right? “She still works here. Just won’t be spending her nights here anymore.”  
  
“It’s okay.” Shaun’s keen observation takes him by surprise, and he inwardly chides himself. It shouldn’t. He knows how bright the boy is, knows firsthand how quickly he cottons onto any given situation. “Mom smokes all the time. I know she tries to do it outside when I’m around but I don’t mind.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” is Nick’s response, lacking any sense of commitment. “I should cut back anyway,” he adds, as some kind of poor supplement for rationality.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“It’s…” _It’s bad for you_ is what he wants to say, but he knows that’s not what Shaun is asking. And he’s not like the kid, all convincing skin and curiosity. Here he is, half-plastic and half-full-of-holes, and he knows what’s being asked of him. It doesn’t make him uncomfortable, precisely, but he finds the answer difficult. Like Nora, her boy asks questions for a reason, doesn’t really accept any excuses, surely wouldn’t bite if given a sorry surface answer.  
  
“Gunks up the tubes,” he decides on at last, slipping that cigarette back into its place among its duplicates, and giving the box an idle shake just to hear the papery rattle it produces. “Ellie gives me hell if I have to ask for help cleaning the film off my wires.” He smiles again, this time more desperately – please, let the kid leave it at that. Leave the exploration of existential crises for a day when they weren’t trying to hash through another awkward getting-to-know-you chapter.  
  
“Oh.” Shaun processes this answer for a few moments before seeming to accept it with a little nod. Then, so like his mother, just as easily as she ever had, he breaks Nick’s heart.  
  
“I like the smell, anyway. It reminds me of Mom.”  
  
And what can he say to that? She’s been gone three damn months and they haven’t seen hide nor tail of her, and here’s her son, taking it all in stride, confident that she’ll be back, just like always. As if this was just another week-long stretch across the settlements, another quick synth delivery service. “Yeah,” is all he can think to say, and it’s a blessing that Shaun seems to accept this, too.  
  
Nick clears his throat and gestures vaguely to the box holding such an array of gizmos and widgets. “You can put your stuff upstairs. Make yourself at home. Place is yours.” As the boy reaches down for his things, another thought strikes Nick, and he maneuvers around it with a little hesitation. “I, uh, don’t have a kitchen or uh – facilities, or anything, but Piper says she’s haggling an old stove off Marcy, and Vadim said he’d help install an, um, extension in the back.”  
  
Shaun’s grin undoes him. That grateful face, that easy air. It’s too familiar. “That’s okay!” His voice is too cheery, too content. How his mother’s absence and all this change isn’t eating at him, Nick might never know. “I’ve got a hot plate that works, and I don’t mind, uh—” He laughs, and for the first time that day, he’s really just a kid. It breaks Nick’s heart all over again. “Nat says I can come over if I ever need to.”  
  
“You two good friends?” More than anything, it’s an excuse to change the subject. They’re both embarrassed, and the kid seems grateful for something else to talk about, too.  
  
“Oh yeah! She’s great. She taught me how to play caravan and got Sheng to stop teasing me after—” He hesitates again, and Nick has to resist a little chuckle at the sight of a blush rising from the kid’s neck. “—uh, well, he’s stopped calling me Mr. Wright, now.”  
  
Nick can’t hide the grin as Shaun’s eyes find anywhere to look but the synth in front of him. “Yeah?” The faded remnants of etched eyebrows rise, and he thumbs his hat back on his head just an inch or so, ridding him of the shadow of his brim and giving him a clearer look at the boy now clutching his box to his chest for dear life. “That Nat’s just as saucy as her sister.”  
  
His cheeks grow redder as Shaun grins, mumbling an appreciative little “yeah” in reply.  
  
Nick chuckles, and cuts the line, lets the poor kid off the hook. “You go get settled in, kid. I’m gonna head out for a smoke.”  
  
He’s halfway out the door and the pitter-patter of worn, old sneakers is halfway up the stairs before the boy stops, calling out to him again.  
  
“Mr. Valentine?”  
  
“I’m havin’ déjà vu over here. Didn’t we cover this, kid?” He turns to face the boy, and Shaun is smiling shyly, hefting his box with enough effort that Nick can tell he’s going to have to get something to use as storage if he doesn’t what whozits and whatsits peppering the office as much as his loose papers do.  
  
“Nick,” Shaun corrects himself, scuffing one foot against the stairs as some train of thought runs behind his careful expression. “I’m – glad I’m here. Mom talks about you a lot.”  
  
Nick’s coolant runs cold. Colder than usual, maybe. He can’t think of what to say to that. Doesn’t know if he has any words in him for it.  
  
“You’re a good man, she says. I think so, too. When she comes back –” Here Nick has to set his jaw to keep his face from giving away the pang in his chest “—I know she’ll be happy I’m here, too. With you.”  
  
And what can he do? Nick smiles, and he’s sure for a moment the boy sees the sadness behind it. “Yeah, kid. Me, too. Get yourself settled in.” Shaun scampers upstairs obediently, and Nick takes a few minutes longer than necessary to nurse his cigarette down to the nub. He waits for the clenching in his chest to ease up before going back inside.  
  
  
  
  
  
There weren’t any windows in the two-story shack, but the plating on all sides was haphazard enough to let a little light in through the cracks when the sun hung high above the city. Nora woke with sweat on her brow, heart racing. The weight in her arms called her back to the present, and she took in the sight of her son sleeping soundly, still clinging to her hand with both of his own. God, she’d never be able to thank Nick enough. All of them enough. Piper, Ellie…  
  
She let out a quiet sigh. Not time for that just yet. She could feel guilty – guiltier – later. With a carefulness and nimbleness she normally reserved for close-quarters combat in the dark, Nora slid out from the bed, freeing her hand and letting Shaun roll comfortably into the depression she’d left behind. She gently removed the trench coat that had bunched between them, and replaced it with the relative softness of the blanket. Where had Nick gotten something so nice?  
  
Ellie, probably. She’d have to thank the woman for that, too. She was piling up debt already. On top of what she already owed them all, she supposed.  
  
She paused at the top of the stairs, listening for any activity below. Not a rustle of a paper, nor the sound of Ellie’s shuffling as she cleaned. It must have gone noon already – probably Nick closed the office, she decided. A little flash of fresh guilt struck her. Always putting himself out for her benefit. How many “thank-yous” could she fit into a lifetime? Not nearly enough.  
  
A glance backwards brought a new door to her attention. Ajar as it was, she could see the rusty fixtures of a shower peeking out of the relative shadows. That definitely wasn’t there the last time she’d been here. So much had changed. At least some of it seemed to be for the better.  
  
Deciding to take advantage of the apparent emptiness of the office, Nora nipped in for a quick shower. The water was lukewarm at best, and left the taste of tin in her mouth, but it wasn’t irradiating her and that in itself was a far cry from anything outside of the city. How much had this cost? Who on earth helped Nick install it? Surely he couldn’t have done it himself. She was running quite a tab already, but this – this was a work of miracles. She’d have to find some way to pay him back. After all, he certainly didn’t shower. Or at least, he didn’t need to. Technically. This must have been for Shaun.  
  
And towels. There were towels! She marveled in this luxury, too, standing in the damp of the little room for a few minutes just to bask in the comfort of something so soft and relatively clean. God, and she needed it. How much gratefulness could fit into a person before they burst?  
  
When she made her way downstairs at last, she’d shuffled back into her jeans and a slightly worse-for-wear button-down she’d found beside the sink. No need to stick all of the grime of the last few weeks right back on a freshly clean body. Not while she could enjoy it, anyway.  
  
In the light of the office, Nick stood with his back to her, fussing with a button-down of his own, muttering to himself – something about stitching, she could make out – under the direct illumination of a desk lamp. He looked so casual, so at home in just his threadbare undershirt and suspenders hanging lazily at his hips. It took her by quiet surprise. He always seemed so...well, “put together” wasn’t quite the phrase, but at least somewhat neat. Hardboiled and ready for anything. Here, it was like catching the star of the show between acts, out of costume and out of character.  
  
It was selfish, she knew, but Nora remained silent, drinking in the moment. Everything was going to get very complicated very soon. She wanted to linger here, in this little stolen minute, where things were no worse than a torn seam and a late start to the day. She smiled despite herself, until her eyes landed on the jagged edges of a hole in the synthetic skin of his shoulder, boasting a neat little view of a steel joint beneath.  
  
“That’s new.” It wasn’t the best way to announce herself, probably, but she hadn’t been able to keep the thought quiet.  
  
Nick turned, some smart reply practically visible on his lips before her stopped, giving her a silent once-over as she approached him – cautious and slow, like she might have crept up on a mine that may or may not have been active. When he didn’t withdraw immediately, she lifted a hand to graze the fraying, plastic weave with her fingertips, concern suddenly knitting her brow. He didn’t shiver, but the implanted memory gave him the urge.  
  
“Yeah,” he answered gruffly, letting her examine while he cut a small piece of thread between his teeth. There’d be no stopping her, anyway. And if he was honest with himself, well – it was almost nice. Familiar. She used to fret about him all the time while they were out combing the Commonwealth together.  
  
_Over a year ago_ , he had to remind himself, and the thought made him stiffen enough that she withdrew her hand.  
  
“Couple’a raiders were giving Cricket some trouble just outside of town. One of ‘em winged me.”  
  
Nora frowned, letting her attention fall to the shirt in his hands, and the sloppy stitch-work she could now see forming a callus of over-threading along the seam of one shoulder. She almost chuckled.  
  
“Poor him.” She reached wordlessly for the shirt with open hands, not taking it from him, but putting the offer out there in plain sight. He shrugged and handed his ham-fisted work over, letting her quietly use the half-bent needle to undo his efforts and reapply them more elegantly.  
  
“Never was much for needlework,” Nick offered dryly, leaning back against his desk while she took up residence in his chair, applying herself to the task at hand with a kind of gratefulness he recognized. Not just for having something to do, but having something that was…simple. Tame.  
  
“I know.” She stole a quick glance up at him before chuckling, nimble fingers making easy work of something that had taken him three tries and the better part of an hour to get as far as he had. “I wasn’t either, really, but then Shaun’s first Halloween came around and we couldn’t find the perfect costume, so I learned.”  
  
“Made a pumpkin of him?” He ventured, vaguely recalling this was the sort of thing mothers did to their infants.  
  
“Oh no. Nate wanted him to be a cop, but I won out in the end. Got him a little pitchfork and everything. I almost had the tail done when…” She trailed off for just a moment, rolling her shoulders back and pulling herself out of a reverie he could recognize instantly. She never did like to think about anything too close to the bombs. She’d go back in history with him as far as the Greek philosophers, but things got hazy the closer they got to the day she entered the vault. He never pushed it.  
  
“Well,” she began again, sliding the needle deftly through a little fold of fabric, “he would have made a cute little devil. That was the idea, anyway.” She froze for just a fraction of a second, and he caught her eyes flitting to the ceiling, to the corner she knew her son occupied. He was and wasn’t Shaun, and that was a brand of complicated neither of them liked to linger in for very long. It was undoubtedly a lot easier for Nick; he’d never known anything but Shaun the little synth. But Nora – his chest tightened again. He couldn’t imagine, didn’t _want_ to imagine.  
  
As he always did when his mind ran away from him, Nick reached down for his pack of cigarettes, giving it a shake and frowning on the lack of noise this created. He was already shifting up to open a desk drawer in search of a new pack when Nora slipped her hand into the breast pocket of her shirt and produced a single, ever so slightly bent cylinder. “Here,” she offered, and as he took it from her, its presence registered more firmly.  
  
“That my shirt?”  
  
For a moment she glanced down to the patchwork in her hands as if to say _of course_ before she, too, realized what she was wearing – really realized, for the first time. “Oh. Sorry, mine was just—”  
  
He waved her apology away like so much smoke, tucking the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and patting down his trouser pockets with his free hand. “Suits you,” he supplied gruffly, frowning at the lack of fruit in his brief search. On cue, a metallic click preceded the brief burst of a tiny flame, and Nora was holding up his flip lighter at the ready, one hand cupped around its side to shield it from any wayward wind sneaking through the cracks in the shack’s walls.  
  
“Light?”  
  
His smile was brief, but it brought a light of relief into her face. He sucked down the flame with studied practice, and she flipped the little zippo closed before handing it back to him. With that, she made fast work of the last of the stitching, tied the thread off with an elegant maneuver of the needle – and not resorting to her teeth at all, he noted; was he that much of a bachelor? – and offered the newly mended shirt up to him for review.  
  
He took it with an appreciative nod, thumbing the new and neat seam once or twice before unceremoniously dropping the relatively-white thing onto his desk. They sat there for a few moments, neither one quite willing to break the domestic spell that had come over them. He looked at the hinges on his skeletal hand. She picked at a rip in the knee of her jeans.  
  
They ached in the quiet.  
  
_All good things_ , as they say.  
  
“Some interesting reading,” Nick spoke again at last, reaching over to pluck up the bundle of papers she’d given him – now dog-eared in several places and marked up with his hurried penmanship. “You wanna tell me about it?”  
  
She frowned. That was his Detective Voice. It was like a shove backwards.  
  
“Tried to be as thorough as I could.”  
  
He let out a smoke-filled chuckle at this, nodding and flipping through the first few pages for the umpteenth time. “I can see that. Makin’ fun of an old synth?”  
  
“Not that I’m above it, but not this time.”  
  
That wit. His smile returned before he could put up any kind of barrier against it. “Yeah,” he agreed, “wise to the end. So what’s this all about?”  
  
“The Institute,” she supplied, in a very clear _I-thought-that-was-obvious_ tone.  
  
“I gathered. Thought that place went up in flames?”  
  
“Nuclear blast,” Nora corrected, “but – we’d be stupid to think nothing survived. Hell, it was careless of me to think they wouldn’t have any numbers outside Boston.”  
  
She looked so harried at this, so disappointed in herself; he couldn’t help but offer instinctive sympathy. Wordlessly, he plucked his cigarette free and offered it to her. So naturally – _too_ naturally – she took it from him gingerly, and nursed a few small drags before handing it back.  
  
“We’re thinking Midwest, right now. That’d be my choice,” she added a little bitterly, “someplace with equal reach and relative solitude. Seeing but unseen.”  
  
He nodded. It was smart. He never really understood why she seemed so raw about her ability to understand the enemy when it came to the Commonwealth’s boogeyman. Well, he understood a little. But it had only gotten worse over time, even and perhaps especially after they’d snuffed out the facilities under the CIT ruins.  
  
“But they left their mark in the capital.” Her voice was suddenly heavier than he was used to, lined with sharp steel. “They built up numbers there. Had a kind of…facility.”  
  
“So you mention,” Nick observed, tonguing his cigarette to one side and using both hands to find the precise page he was looking for. “Some – Zimmer fella?” She visibly winced at the name, and his face pinched with uncertain concern.  
  
“He was supposed to be gone. Ayo –” she spat the name like a broken tooth “—was technically a stand-in. But it had been ten years; no one thought he was even alive anymore. He was older, I guess. I never heard more than that, Ayo never trusted me much and I think he kept his staff tight-lipped because of it, but they’d been running the program without him at full throttle.”  
  
Her phrasing gave him pause, and he shuffled briefly through the report again. “You never saw him?”  
  
“Once,” and her voice was blank all at once, and it bothered him far more than the tension it had held just moments ago, “but not – it was dark. I didn’t catch his face. He told me who he was, I guess I have to take him on his word for that, but he knew Institute procedure, and everyone seemed to work under him.”  
  
“Nora.” The shock of her name startled her enough to look up, and his face was a picture – a plea. “What _happened_?” There was a desperation in his voice that hit her like a bullet. She held his gaze for a silent moment, and he set the sheaf of papers aside to reach out for her with his good hand. She took it like a lifeline off the bough of a ship, and her expression was just as strained. His thumb swept over the back of her palm and noted a new scar there, too. Small and knotted, and she flinched just perceptibly when he touched it. That only served to heighten his concern. He sat atop his desk and she stood, evening their heights enough that neither was looking down or up at the other. Everything in his eyes begged her: _Tell me_.  
  
“I want to—” Like she was reading his thoughts. But there came a creak on the stairs and her head shot around, the way it might have if they were out in the dark on some case, and he wondered not for the first time why she seemed so ill at ease here, of all places.  
  
“Hey, champ,” Nora called to her son, giving Nick’s hand a little squeeze before dropping away. He felt a little knob of scar tissue in the heart of her palm as she did so, and the hum of his general processing stilled for a moment. Something had gone _through_ her hand.  
  
The boy’s brief look of worry broke into his dawn of a smile and he scurried toward the pair of them, tucking himself up against his mother’s side so that she had to lift her arm to rest it around him. She ruffled his hair affectionately, and now that he was standing, she could see it – _feel_ it.  
  
“You’re growing like a weed,” she observed, and Shaun straightened his spine in a moment of pride.  
  
“A whole inch,” he declared, looking as haughty as any ten-year-old could.  
  
Nick and Nora exchanged a quiet, but not displeased glance. Well, that was that question answered. They’d spent a while speculating whether or not the kid would mature – what would synth puberty even look like?  
  
“Mr. Zwicky and Miss Edna are taking us to the science center today to do our bloatfly dissections.”  
  
“On a Saturday?” Nora’s grimace at the thought of willingly slicing open one of those things mixed with the confusion of such a strange date.  
  
“Yeah, Miss Edna says it’s because not everyone wants to do it. I don’t have to go,” Shaun added, looking back and forth between his mother and Nick, somewhere between asking permission and offering to help. Again, his hair was ruffled, and Nora shook her head.  
  
“Nah, you go, I’ll be here when you get back.”  
  
“Promise?” And suddenly the worry in his tone made sense, and Nick witnessed guilt cut through Nora like a hot knife through butter.  
  
“ _Promise_.” It was emphatic, and it ached. She bent down to kiss the crown of his head before scooting him off toward the stairs. “Go get washed up before you go.”  
  
By the time the pair of them had said their goodbyes to Shaun, ushering him out the door with a grin on his face and a small bag slung over his shoulder, Nora was smiling in that wistful way again. Nick rested what he hoped was a comforting hand on her shoulder, and she reached up and across her body to give his fingers a thankful little squeeze. She watched the boy disappear at the end of the alley, lingering there for a few seconds after before retreating into the office again. She leaned her back against the door after closing it, heaving out a sigh that carried with it some relief.  
  
“You’ve got him in school?”  
  
Nick, for his part, looked a little abashed, busying himself with stubbing out the dog-end of his cigarette in an already overflowing ashtray. “He wanted to go. I figured—”  
  
“No – I mean, I’m glad. He gets to be…normal.” The sad shadow at the edges of her expression was unmistakable, and he knew with certainty then that she really hadn’t meant to be away for so long. Or at the very least, she hadn’t wanted to. He wondered how much that counted, in the grand scheme of things. Intentions usually amounted to a hill of beans when weighed against unfavorable results. “His grades all right?”  
  
“You know him. Straight A’s, and he drives Zwicky up a wall with all his questions.” Nora laughed, that clear-as-a-bell thing that sent some gear within him spinning. “Edna says he’s one of the brightest she’s ever seen.”  
  
“Do they know?” Worry pinched her brows again, and Nick’s frown settled back onto his face. It was a question he asked himself often.  
  
“Maybe. Edna maybe, at least. Nobody says anything. Bein’ around me, helps sell the human story by comparison.” Nora looked disapproving at this common self-deprecation, but he just shrugged in response. A truth was a truth, no matter how unsightly. And boy, didn’t he know it.  
  
“Does _he_ know?”  
  
Ah. The big question. He couldn’t say he hadn’t thought about it, and often. But if he stuck to the evidence – and a little bit of his gut – the answers were never clear-cut.  
  
“I think he…suspects something.” The weight of the conversation had Nick flopping into his chair, and Nora followed suit, taking up a perch on the edge of his desk. “The questions he asks, the way he _doesn’t_ ask questions. He hasn’t asked me directly, so I haven’t said anything. Didn’t think it…was my place.”  
  
She fixed him with a sad look he couldn’t quite get a read on, and that sent an electrical itch alight along his wires. He prided himself in having a good read on people; it made him a good detective. It drove him wild that she could elude him like that. He used to revel in that feeling, but it would be a lie to say he couldn’t see it coming back to bite him in the ass at some point. She’d never bothered to keep secrets before. He didn’t know any of her tells. And she was always running around with that Deacon – god only knew what _he_ ’d been teaching her.  
  
“Funny,” Nora managed at last, “I always thought, when it came time to tell him, you might…” She stood at some kind of precipice, and that itch flared all the more. He wished he could _help her_ , damn it. Why would she keep him at arm’s length now?  
  
“I would,” he finished for her, a little anticlimactic in his delivery. “I can,” he corrected, “if he asks.”  
  
She nodded, rolling her shoulders back with the effort of another sigh. There grew between them an expanding gulf of silence, and for probably the first time, he wasn’t comfortable with it.  
  
“Look,” she spoke at last, fixing him with another, pleading smile, “I know there are a lot of things I need to answer for.”  
  
“I didn’t—” But she held up her hands, almost as if in surrender.  
  
“I don’t think I can answer any important questions without Deacon, and who knows when he’ll show back up.” Nick’s jaw set. He had his suspicions that the old team would be paired up again. He wondered how long their reunion had been, or if they’d ever parted. “I know it’s asking for more than I deserve, but – I really, really need a normal day.”  
  
Despite himself, the detective smirked. “Never knew you to take a vacation.”  
  
“I’m trying new things these days,” she laughed, still a tone of pleading in her voice. And with that look in her eyes, all dark and desperate, he was had. Bang to rights. He’d never been very good at telling her no, and now, giddy like a kid in the back of his mind, glad as he was to have her here and alive, well – how could he deny her something that easy to give?  
  
“What’s your take on ‘normal’ these days, then?”  
  
On cue, a gurgling rumble caused her to drop a hand over her stomach, chuckling a bit. “I’d kill for something that actually resembles food.”  
  
“You have, if my memory blocks aren’t going.” He stood, and she laughed, preparing to get up to follow him. But he waved her down, gesturing toward the recently vacated seat. “Siddown. I think we’ve got enough here to cobble together a passable breakfast.”  
  
“You cook?” She asked, pleased but bewildered, as she slid into the torn fabric of his favored chair, still warm from his constant, low heat.  
  
“I’m trying new things these days,” Nick shot back, and the snarky smile she could hear in his voice set her more at ease than even a big glass of whiskey and a cigarette could. He disappeared into the cramped space behind the stairs, and she rested a cheek in her palm with elbow propped on the desktop. The sounds of metal on metal and rusty hinges told her two things: He had a fridge and a stove, and they were both in bad shape. Nora smiled. It was endearing, really.  
  
“You gonna put on a cute little apron for me?” She called above the soft din of food preparation, slyly toeing open the bottom drawer of his desk to check on his not-so-secret stash of cigarettes and old booze. She was unsurprised but pleased by the contents, and fished out a relatively fresh pack, revealing a small stash of papers underneath. It wasn’t like him to stuff his notes away, and it couldn’t have been Ellie – she would have organized them, at least.  
  
“If you’re looking for a Miss Nanny impression, my French accent leaves a lot to be desired.”  
  
Too long with Deacon and snooping rubs off on you. She carefully flitted the remaining cigarette packs out of the way to browse over the visible document, crumpled as it was. What was this, locations? Dates? Why all the strikes through the names?  
  
A cold shock ran through her when she realized. In the corner, a missing person’s short description was cited, circled, and marked with Nick’s frazzled hand: _Nora sighting?_ The whole thing had a heavy-handed X marked through it. Oh, Nick.  
  
But then, how could she be surprised? Of course he would have looked for her. Of course the dates ran as recent as last week. _Of course_. Guilt sprang anew in her chest like an icy fountain, and she shoved the drawer closed before footfalls and creaking floorboards let her know the synth sleuth was on his short way back to her.

 

“What’s the special today, chef?” She practically strained to keep that pang out of her voice.  
  
“Omelet, “Nick answered flatly, setting the plate down in front of her, fork that was missing a prong already stabbed into the heart of it.  
  
“What kind?” Not that she was complaining, given that she was wrenching the fork free and cutting a bite free within seconds.  
  
“The kind with vegetables,” he practically harrumphed, settling into the chair usually reserved for clients.  
  
“And?” She already had a warm chunk stuffed to one side of her mouth, grinning like a kid at the sheer novelty of _hot food_ after all this time.  
  
“More vegetables.”  
  
“S’posed to be eggs in omelets, yeah?” Her voice was thick with food, and she was too hungry to be embarrassed by the childishness of it all.  
  
“That so? I use diesel, myself.”  
  
She laughed, choking for a moment on her too-big mouthful, and he couldn’t help but smile. She could light up a room, so like her son.  
  
“Anyway, we had to use all those ‘Lurk eggs from the Castle somehow.”  
  
Nora laughed again, shoving a hand over her mouth this time so she could get through a guffaw with at least some dignity.  
  
“You’re so good to me.”  
  
“Someone’s gotta keep your smart ass fed.”  
  
“It does have an old world education,” she conceded, as smartly as she’d been accused.  
  
“Too bad your head didn’t come along for the ride.”  
  
Stealing a page from Deacon’s poorly written book, Nora clutched a hand over her chest, dropping her fork dramatically to the plate. “You cut me to the quick, Valentine.”  
  
“Ah, I never cut you more than a dirty look.”  
  
“Even when I say please!”  
  
There came a sudden, crashing silence.  
  
Fuck.  
  
She’d been with Deacon too long. They were always lewd and stupid together. He brought out all her latent little sister tendencies, and he enjoyed nothing better than riling her up. But this wasn’t the field, this wasn’t a night of facing death head-on with Deacon.  
  
Nora stared at her nearly-finished breakfast. Nick stared at a point just above her left shoulder. This was not, on the whole, how either of them had imagined their reunion would go.  
  
“Well,” Nick broke the stillness, whipping a cigarette out of the box she’d previously retrieved and lighting it with a little more flare than necessary, “I’m not easy. Take a fella out to dinner first, at least.”  
  
She breathed tangible relief, body unclenching and forehead falling into the cradle of her hands, elbows on either side of her plate. “It’s a date.” It was really just words for the sake of saying something, but it hung in the air between them for a few moments longer than strictly necessary.  
  
Nora finished cleaning her plate with renewed concentration, and took the offered cigarette when she found it held out to her after swallowing the last bite.  
  
“You know me too well.”  
  
“Well enough,” Nick answered a little roughly, snapping his lighter closed after she’d gotten a proper light. “What else you qualifyin’ as ‘normal’ today?”  
  
She took the bait, and gratefully. “Tempt you to a hand of caravan?”  
  
“Now don’t you go starting something you can’t finish,” he warned, gesturing at her with a metal hand that clenched his dying cigarette between two fingers, “Nat’s been showing me some of her tricks.”  
  
“Nat would never give away her secrets.”  
  
“I asked nice,” Nick retorted with a smirk, “said ‘please’ and everything.”  
  
This brought a darkly rewarding flush to the tips of Nora’s ears, but she matched him eye-for-eye, and there it was – that something. He hadn’t seen it in her since she’d gotten back. Maybe just a shadow, when Shaun had woken up and her world had come apart at the seams. But now, it was here, looking him right in the face. Maybe with a little less fire than he could remember, but it thrilled him nonetheless. He supposed, for this, he could pretend to be normal. At least for a day.  
  
“Money where your mouth is, Valentine.”  
  
“Don’t get smart with me,” he admonished, throwing open a drawer lazily and retrieving a stack of cards.  
  
“Wouldn’t want to waste the material,” she shot back.  
  
And she burned. And he basked.  
  
  
  
They wiled the time away into the evening with a few hands (which she lost), a few light and easy stories (to which she didn’t contribute much), and a little more than half a bottle of whiskey (which they shared). Shaun had dropped in to excitedly report his entire dissection experience, seeming unaware that his audience may not have been as captivated by all the gory details as he had. He played a hand against Nick with his mother, and she was not ungrateful to see the old bucket of bolts soundly beaten, even if it wasn’t technically by her. With that, however, he announced – a little shyly – that Nat had made plans for them involving a few newly scavenged comic books and a date with a Silver Shroud rerun. She kissed him goodbye and he held her a little longer than he needed to, she had to fight back a shimmer of tears when he finally pulled away and skipped back out the door.  
  
“Nat?” She cast this question with motherly suspicion at the man across from her, even as she held out her glass and he dutifully refilled it.  
  
Nick grinned but shrugged, returning to his own drink. Not that alcohol really did anything for him, but he took pleasure in small human habits, and she’d never thought to question it before. “I haven’t asked.”  
  
“You? Not asking questions?” Both brows hung high on her forehead in disbelief, wry little smile curling easily onto her lips. She was a little loose now, he knew, and much as he hated to admit it, she was better for it. She settled more soundly into the chair across from him, glanced at the corners of the room less often and with less fervor. _Happy_ , she would have called herself if he’d accused her of having even the corner of a sheet to the wind. _I don’t get drunk, I get happy_.  
  
“A good detective knows when it’s best just to observe,” Nick retorted in a tone that very clearly said he was going to keep his secrets whether she liked it or not.  
  
“I’ve never been very good at that part,” Nora lamented, throwing her legs over one arm of the comfy chair and leaning her back against the other so she was effectively cradled.  
  
“You ain’t kiddin’.”  
  
“Aw, come on,” she practically pouted, “we solved more than a case or two, the both of us.”  
  
Now it was his turn to wear that wistful sort of smile. “You always were the first to get your hands dirty.”  
  
“I’m not built for medium-range.” It was practically a whine. He chuckled. “Longshot or up close and personal. No in-betweens.”  
  
“Don’t I know it.” But his tone was light, his teasing easy. She made it so goddamn easy. He felt that bubbling sensation deep in the pit of him; he _wanted_ to be angry. He was usually pretty good at it. Nick could wield guilt and disappointment like a veteran. But here, now, it was too damn difficult – when easy and smooth were so close you could touch them, so simple to get at.  
  
They sat in comfy, nostalgic quiet for a little while, Travis chittering away on the radio stuffed haphazardly atop a filing cabinet. Eventually, he teetered off into the shuffling sound of various holotapes, finally fitting one into the appropriate slot and letting the music crackle to life  
  
Nora had barely heard the introductory notes before she was on her feet – a little clumsily – and at the radio, twisting the knob to fill the room with Ella Fitzgerald’s voice.  
  
“I haven’t heard this in _ages_ ,” she explained, folding her arms atop the cabinet and resting her cheek there, and suddenly the whole atmosphere was more than a little wistful.  
  
Nick had shot straight up when she’d scrambled out of the chair, instinct driving up upright and guiding his hand to the spot his holster usually occupied. But he felt empty air – of course he did, bandolier and holster were resting higgledy-piggeldy atop his notes at the back of the room, pipe pistol tucked safely in place. He breathed in a way he didn’t need but that calmed him nonetheless, and smiled a little lopsidedly at the relatively small woman standing on tip-toe to press her ear to that speaker.  
  
He recognized the tune. Knew it instantly, if only because she’d sing along during early mornings out in the Commonwealth, scrubbing herself clean of what dirt she could remove and packing up camp from the night before. Ella and Louis, she’d told him. ‘I’ll Never Be Free.’  
  
He’d approached her before he’d really known he was going to, and only Nora’s surprised little jerk under the weight of his hand on her shoulder shocked him into the moment. But she met him with an easy, honest smile, and the moment seemed to melt around them. “Hey,” she greeted, coming out of some kind of daydream or memory.  
  
“Hey yourself.” He reached out with his other hand – a little hesitant, given its sharp metal nature, but she never seemed to mind. A soft grip on her side aimed to spin her gently toward him so that they faced each other. She relented without complaint until he’d fixed one of her hands on his shoulder, and one of his own just above her hip. He was… _swaying_.  
  
“Nick Valentine,” she chided, and he laughed with a what-can-you-do sort of shrug. “I don’t dance,” she added, trying halfheartedly to back away.  
  
“I’ve seen you with Deacon at the Third Rail,” he countered, all gentleness. He wasn’t going to pin her anywhere she didn’t want to be, but she didn’t seem too keen to pry herself away completely.  
  
“For a cover,” Nora practically scolded him, “that doesn’t count. I don’t – I’ve got two left feet, you know that.”  
  
“No time like the present to learn, then.”  
  
It wasn’t like he was asking anything very complicated, even in her… _happy_ state. He kept his feet on either side of hers, and did most of the minute swaying for them. She was free to let out a soft breath and creep forward until she was leaning against his chest.  
  
_Just like a chain, bound to my heart…  
  
_ “I didn’t take you for the dancing type,” she murmured against him, like the moment was made of glass and even a loud voice could send it shattering.  
  
“Stuck on that ‘trying new things’ bit, I guess.”  
  
“Mm.” But the sound was a content one, and he was grateful for the silence that fell around them for a few moments. That comfortable silence he relished, how easily it came. How easily it _still_ came, after so long.  
  
Her hands shifted from the traditional places on his shoulder and clasped in one of his so that she could snake her arms around his neck, propelling herself on tip-toe to do so. He took it in stride, despite the sudden whirring of his system, and let his own arms fall around her waist, as gentlemanly as he could manage. It was difficult to be a gentleman in such close quarters – there weren’t a lot of extremely appropriate places for his hands – but she merely pressed her cheek into his shoulder and let him continue rocking her gingerly.  
  
_Though I may try and try,  
no one can satisfy…  
  
_ It wasn’t as though they hadn’t had small, intimate moments before. But they always hung thick with things unsaid, curiosities unsatisfied. He’d thought about how he might handle her return, far more than once, and he wondered for the first time if she’d ever deliberated similarly. He liked to think the fact that she was leaning so heavily into him, giving him permission to bear the majority of her weight – not that it was much to bear, given his capabilities – was a good sign. Or, well, _a_ sign, anyway.  
  
“Things aren’t gonna stay this way.” She hooked it like a question, but it was more of a reluctant surrender.  
  
“Knowing you? Probably not.”  
  
He felt her helpless little chuckle against his neck and did his best not to think about whether or not synths of his grade could get goosebumps.  
  
“But for right now?”  
  
His arms tightened a little around her, and he felt hers coil just slightly in response. “For right now,” he agreed.  
  
And perhaps because he’d watched too many old holotapes (which he’d never admit) or read too many slightly sappy spy novels (which he would admit _grudgingly_ ), he shifted his grip, letting her weight fall mostly into his arms as he leaned towards her. He didn’t know if he’d ever actually _done_ it – from the impressions he got, Nick-the-human hadn’t gone in much for dancing – he’d seen it enough times that he figured he could at least replicate it. It helped that she was…happy.  
  
He dipped her gently, and let her half-lay there in his arms for a moment or two. Or maybe for years. She stared up at him, and the look on her face was trying to _tell_ him something, he knew. He could feel it in his metal bones. He wished he could hear it.  
  
But then, slow and spectacular as a comet scorching the night sky, she craned upward to plant a little kiss on his lips.  
  
And she burned. And so did he.  
  
_I’ll never be free_.


	4. Empty Eternities

_Why were you so surprised_  
_that you never saw the stranger?_  
_Did you ever let your lover_  
_see the stranger in yourself?_

  
  
  
  
  
“I want you to know, Nora…”  
  
She knows he’s in the room, but can’t tell where in the dim light. Not until she hears that lazy scraping of a chair’s metal legs against the concrete ground as he pulls up a seat closer to her. He’s on her right, but that eye is too swollen-over to get anything other than the vague impression of a figure.  
  
“I want you to know that I know who you are.” His voice isn’t the sandpaper scare that Kellogg’s had been, but it’s something close – if Kellogg had cleaned up his act and gotten a sizeable stick up his ass.  
  
“I know _who_ you are, do you understand?”  
  
She can’t speak, can barely make noise. There’s joy in his tone at this.  
  
“I suspect you know who I am, by now, too. But not as…intimately.”  
  
His hand feels like leather against her arm as he pokes his fingers into and out of cuts, bruises, craters of picked-clean flesh.  
  
“But I want you to know me, Nora. I want you to know the man whose work you so succinctly…demolished.”  
  
She feels the electric hum of something above the back of her hand. Her fingers are flexing, but the straps are too tight. The chair creaks with her effort to move.  
  
“I want you to know my _pain_ , Nora. As intimately as I can express it.”  
  
Fire tears through her flesh, every nerve at the end of her fingertips is alight with electricity and pain. Somewhere, under all the shock of it, she’s aware of the warm stickiness pooling at her palm; she knows she can’t move her hand anymore. But hardly any of this registers. She isn’t aware of her own, strained, prolonged scream until she hears someone else from beyond one of the thick, concrete walls, desperate and sympathetic and just as unable to move.  
  
“BLUE!”  
  
She can’t hold onto consciousness. Her eyes are fluttering. The pain is snaking its barbed fingers through every vein that runs up her arm.  
  
“WHAT. THE. HELL.”  
  
The needle in her thigh only garners notice when its new flame lights her up from the inside, forces her headlong into unbearable awareness. Pain. Pain. Pain. Blood. Rust.  
  
_Pain_.  
  
“WAKE UP YOU LOUSY VAULT RAT!”

 

  
  
  
There was a gasp, and Nora shot upright in bed, only to be knocked back again by a heavy-handed pillow hitting her squarely in the face. Someone was screaming and her ears were ringing, but the world was spinning and she couldn’t feel the concrete, the wood of the chair, the voice in her ear--  
  
“YOU THOUGHT –” this was punctuated with another hard smack of the pillow “—YOU COULD JUST –” and another “—COME BACK –” whoever was doing this had one hell of an arm “—AND NOT SAY ANYTHING?”  
  
Nora’s forearms were fighting to gather between her face and the oncoming assault, not comfortable certainly but not anything like the lightning she was expecting to feel in her arm. When she curled onto her side in a more protective, fetal position, her assailant did not relent, merely changed their grip and began bringing the sack of cloth down on her with two-handed, over-arm swings.  
  
The creak of the springs in the mattress. The smell of a room that may as well have been a giant ashtray.  
  
Oh. _Oh._ She was home. So this was…  
  
“Piper,” she managed, shooting a hand out on one of the woman’s wind-ups in order to catch a descending wrist in a rather vice-like, reflexive grip.  
  
“Oh so _now_ you know who I am,” the reporter barked, attempting to rip herself out of Nora’s clutches in order to continue her attack. The pillow was wrested from her in lieu of the wrist, but this only freed up her hands to slap, open-palmed, across the field of Nora’s shoulders and back.  
  
“Ow – hey – Pipes, listen—”  
  
“Ooooh no, don’t you _Pipes_ me, you – you – you _unbelievable_ , idiotic—”  
  
“Look – ouch – I’m not arguing but don’t you think—”  
  
“—can’t _believe_ you had the guts to sneak in like some kinda—”  
  
“—you could berate me verbally – agh! – instead –”  
  
“—got to be the most monumental moron I’ve ever met—”  
  
“Now that one’s just plain not true—”  
  
“— _supposed to be dead_!”  
  
Piper was losing steam, her onslaught slowing, and when Nora could risk a peek she could see the frustrated tears threatening to spill.  
  
“Piper…” Nora took hold of those hands gently and pulled the other woman into an embrace, receiving a few more slaps and fist-pounds against her back before the attack ceased entirely, and arms wound their way around her figure so tightly she might have had trouble breathing.  
  
“You – just – are _gone_ ,” Piper sobbed into the shoulder of a borrowed button-down, clenching its fabric behind Nora like she was hanging onto a rock in a storm-laden sea, “for a whole _year_ , Blue, and now you’re back and you just – you just – don’t _tell_ me?”  
  
The accusation stung, and it was supposed to. She deserved worse, Nora knew, and she gently patted and rubbed Piper’s back until the reporter was out of heavy sobs and could straighten up, bracing her hands against Nora’s shoulders.  
  
“Your hair’s short,” she laughed wetly, blinking away the last few tears.  
  
“Yeah,” Nora agreed, abashed, hooking her fingers gently around the elbows of Piper’s favorite coat, still as beat up as it had ever been. “I’m sorry, Piper. I’ve only been in town two days – I think – but I should have…I didn’t know what to say.”  
  
“ _Hey Piper_ ,” the reporter mocked, “ _I’m alive, thanks for taking care of my kid while I was gone—_ ”  
  
“Piper.” Nora’s voice was sharp, and her grip on Piper’s arms tensed. Piper had enough decency to look a little ashamed, but Nora didn’t seem to be looking for that. “I _am_ grateful. I can’t ever repay you. You, Nick, Ellie…”  
  
“Ellie,” Piper chuckled, voice still a little choked, “yeah, she – you know we—”  
  
“Nick mentioned.”  
  
“Ha. ‘Course he did. Rusty bucket never could keep anything from his partner.”  
  
“Well he got really good at hiding his hooch after a while.”  
  
Again, Piper laughed, and Nora was grateful for the sound. She laughed, too, and it was so pleasant how easily it came. She pulled Piper in to plant a kiss on her forehead and scoop her forward in another hug, the pair of them sitting half-slung on the edge of the bed, basking in a reunion neither had been sure would happen.  
  
“Ugh, Blue, you don’t half smell like—” Piper never had a taste for cigarettes, especially in the quantities her two favorite detectives sucked them down, but when she leaned back to look Nora over, her expression grew uncomfortably sly. “Is that your shirt?”  
  
Nora’s muscles seized for half a second before she held up a warning finger. “Behave,” was her only response as she swung herself off the bed and aimed to slip around the stairs to the miniature kitchen.  
  
“Are those his _boxers_?”  
  
“ _Behave_ ,” Nora called a little more sternly, glad that her slight smirk wasn’t visible as she made herself busy at the stove.  
  
“I’m not saying – just didn’t know he wore boxers. Always thought he was more of a commando guy.”  
  
“You spend much time thinking about Nick’s underwear?”  
  
The door was already creaking open, and the devil of which they spoke was filling the cramped doorway with a _what-did-I-just-walk-into_ expression painted on his plastic face. One arm was full of small food bundles – a few tatos, mutfruit, even a small slab of Brahmin steak – and the other was pulling the door closed behind him.  
  
“Piper,” Nick greeted shortly, shifting around her to stuff his haul into the fridge in a rather disorganized fashion. “And here I thought I told you visiting hours were after breakfast.”  
  
“Thank you,” Nora chimed in softly, plucking a tato out of his hand before he could tuck it away. He merely nodded.  
  
“C’mon, Nick. When you’ve got the hottest story right here under your roof? I mean, public opinion was leaning towards briefs. This’ll change the state of the city!”  
  
“I don’t like to chafe,” Nick replied, as haughtily as he could manage. Neither woman could keep the grin off their face or the laugh out of their throat. “I didn’t – really know what you might like,” he added, easing the last, brown-wrapped package out from under his arm and offering it out to Nora, “but I picked you up a few things.”  
  
“You didn’t have to,” she began, taking the package from him with a grateful kind of smile.  
  
“Yeah,” was the whole of his answer and he simply shrugged, pulling his coat off in the humidity of the brightening day and tossing it lazily onto the half-rotted wooden rack. He slid in behind her to relieve her of the pan she’d been warming, ushering her politely but firmly out of the way. “You change.”  
  
She relented with a little laugh, and turned to climb the steps, package lazily cradled in her arms.  
  
When the door of the bathroom thunked closed above them, Piper turned her grin at full wattage onto Nick. Like a cat, she simply waited.  
  
“I can feel you smirking at me,” Nick offered after a moment or two, keeping his hands busy with food preparation. “Gonna burn holes in the back of my head.”  
  
“Mm. Gettin’ awfully _domestic_ there, Nick?”  
  
“No comment, Piper.”  
  
“Aw, Nicky, don’t be like that! ‘Bout time you two—”  
  
“ _Piper_ ,” he warned, and she threw up her hands with a sigh that clearly said _have it your way, party-pooper_.  
  
“She tell you what had her off the radar for so long?” It was clear, the innocence with which this question had been asked, but it gave Nick pause all the same. He let the knife in his metal hand rest briefly against the edge of the stove, shuffling through the past day and a half in silence for a few moments.  
  
“She…” He sighed through his teeth, a little hiss of frustration. He couldn’t say what she was, exactly, and that ate at him. “She’s not—”  
  
“You two gossiping about me, now?”  
  
Nora descended in a set of trousers that were a fairly fitting length but far too wide, and a beaten up button-front shirt that seemed to suffer from precisely the opposite problem. She’d split the difference by thieving a belt and tucking in the shirt, cinching the entire ensemble almost empire-style, sleeves rolled up to her elbows.  
  
Neither Piper nor Nick missed the gnarled knots of scars peeking out from those sleeves, disappearing at her covered biceps. Piper grimaced, but – Nick thanked whatever powers-that-be – remained silent on the subject. For now, anyway.  
  
“Why,” she pried in her best Reporter Voice, “you got a scoop I can get a quote on?”  
  
“I feel like I told you to behave.”  
  
“That’ll be the day,” Nick groused over his sizzling pan, but his voice was good-natured enough.  
  
“Hey, I’m not the one who went ghost for a whole year. Where’s her lecture?” Piper demanded, gesturing widely toward Nora as the woman flopped down to join her on the bed.  
  
“Believe you me, it’s coming.”  
  
It was Nora’s turn to grimace, like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She met Piper’s eyes, who just raised her eyebrows in a distinctly _what-did-you-expect_ kind of way.  
  
The door creaked open for the second time, though this time it was flung with far more drama.  
  
“Hey hey hey, room for one more at this little shindig?”  
  
“Deacon,” the three of them said in unison – Nick impassively, Nora with a smile that radiated relief, and Piper with a disapproving purse of her lips.  
  
“Aw, Miss Wright, no love for an old acquaintance?”  
  
Nora was up and at his side in seconds, latching onto the fabric of his plain shirt like she might lose him if she didn’t hang on. He smiled and slung an arm lazily – although, somehow, protectively; possessively, even – around her shoulders, pulling her in just a little.  
  
Piper and Nick shared the briefest of glances, and Nick – well, he wouldn’t be Nick Valentine if he didn’t notice the way Deacon’s fingertips brushed searchingly over the little bulb of a scar on the back of her hand, and her fingers flexed in some kind of coded response. They’d always had a kind of language of their own, those two – they were great in the field together. From the stories they heard (not counting a single one sold to them by Deacon, because of course not), they practically read each other’s minds on ops. Nick could have respect for that, at least. A good partner was hard to find, and when you found one that clicked that well, there wasn’t a thing in the world that could pull you apart. It was rare, that kind of trust, and even if his tongue suddenly tasted like heated copper and his jaw was setting into a small frown, he was glad that Nora had it. She needed that kind of understanding. That kind of friend.  
  
_Friend_ , he found himself thinking, in some sort of self-reminder. Why? He already knew that. But that didn’t stop _friend friend friend_ from flashing aggressive neon behind his eyes.  
  
Nora had settled into Deacon’s side with her arms draped comfortably around him, and no one said anything about it – very pointedly. Nora had always been on the touchy-feely side, but as far as they could tell, no one had _ever_ seen Deacon offer his personal space to someone so freely.  
  
Piper answered with a little harrumph, for which Nora gave her a rather thankful smile – she was, contrary to what her entire demeanor suggested, behaving herself quite well. For Piper, anyway.  
  
“Do I detect the sultry aroma of delicacies a la Detective?”  
  
“Omelet,” Nick answered in a rough, _not-gonna-indulge-you-smartass_ tone of voice.  
  
“Again?” There wasn’t complaint in Nora’s voice so much as curiosity, and this was met with a little laugh from Piper.  
  
“It’s kiiiind of the only thing he knows how to make,” she explained, causing Nick to frown all the more.  
  
“A very singular cook, then, our dear synthetic sleuth.” Deacon’s smile was lazy, and that mouth of his was smart as ever.  
  
“Any’a you three wiseguys can afford to be picky?”  
  
The trio shook their heads and met him with enough emphatic overcompensation that he couldn’t shake a little smirk, waving them down with a roll of his eyes. “Kill the dramatics. Maybe go sit in the office proper, you’re crowding my workspace.”  
  
“A specialist needs room for his art!” Deacon declared, shuffling around to usher the ladies toward the desks. It was still a crowded space, though far less so than what was offered between the bed, stairs, and the world’s smallest kitchenette.  
  
Piper had taken the comfiest chair, with Deacon and Nora pressed close together atop the same desk. It was Ellie’s, naturally. Nick’s desk would require a construction crew to get enough free space to accommodate two. They were exchanging quiet laughs, and Deacon was spinning some new whopper by the time Nick had plates ready for them. Well, two plates. Nora got a proper plate, Piper was given the second, and Deacon was saddled with a saucepan lid that caused his omelet to droop towards the center.  
  
“Ah, and a hint of rust, my favorite seasoning.”  
  
“You wanna be smart with that mouth or you wanna eat with it?”  
  
“Are those so mutually exclusive?”  
  
Nora nudged her partner in the ribs with a sharp elbow, and he gave a little cough and a surrender of a chuckle in response. “I’m eating, I’m eating,” he declared in a tone meant to pacify, using the bent spoon he’d been given (there had only been two forks) to begin harvesting healthily sized chunks.  
  
“Auuuugh, Nick,” Piper’s groan was muffled against the food puffing her cheeks out like a squirrel, “you could give Takahashi a run for his money.”  
  
“One cooking bot’s enough for this town. You only like it ‘cause all you ever have is noodles, anyhow.”  
  
Nick had taken up his seat in his beat up old chair, wheeling back just enough to give them all room to breathe. They ate in comparable peace, joking between bites and making appreciative noises as they shoveled slightly runny omelet bits into their mouths. Nick had been right, they couldn’t afford to be picky, and Nora and Deacon ate like they were afraid the food would disappear if they took too long.  
  
File that one away. Clues everywhere, but no real trail to follow just yet.  
  
“So,” Deacon ventured with mild hesitation, “where’s the kid?”  
  
“Couch at my place,” Piper answered, setting her empty plate on her lap with a satisfied sigh. “Nat and him fell asleep at the radio, didn’t have the heart to wake ‘em up.”  
  
“Lucky them,” Nora groaned.  
  
“Ah, I thought I heard your dulcet, diplomatic tones this morning. You give our vaultie here a little wakeup call?”  
  
“And then some.” Nora’s tone was playful, though Piper still frowned. When Nora crossed her arms and cupped each elbow in a palm, leaning sideways into Deacon’s shoulder, Nick realized the scar on her hand had an exact twin on the other. Like some kind of stigmata.  
  
“All right you two,” Piper declared, sitting up a little straighter and shoving her plate carelessly atop a box of closed case files. “Party’s over. Time to fess up.”  
  
Nora and Deacon shared a look. Nick got the distinct impression that, despite the darkness of those signature sunglasses, both could read one another as plain as a billboard. Well, an in-tact billboard, anyway.  
  
“It’s a long story,” Nora began a little inadequately, but as Piper opened her mouth to recite the riot act, Deacon held up his hands, fingers splayed, as if to hold off the oncoming interrogation.  
  
There were scars on his palms, too. Not as harsh and perfectly centered as Nora’s, but little pairs of dots lined the outside edge of each hand. As if sensing Nick’s unblinking gaze, he quickly dropped his hands, and Nora – as if by instinct – reached over to wrap hers around his nearest set of fingers, giving a comforting little squeeze.  
  
“That’s not a lie,” Deacon explained, and nodded at the stereo eye roll that his audience provided him. “Hey, you can trust it – I didn’t say it.” At least that much was true. “And we can’t really tell you everything, anyway. Not without compromising some important – things. But…”  
  
When he trailed off, Nora picked up the sentence. “It was a Railroad op. It was supposed to be short – maybe a week or two. Three at the outside. Didn’t think we needed to tell anyone because we wouldn’t be gone that long, and it was best for our cover if we didn’t.”  
  
“So you were together.” Nick spoke for the first time in a little while, and all heads turned to the synth. His words were punctuated by the metallic flip of his lighter, and the sizzle of the start of a cigarette.  
  
“Yeah.” Deacon again. “’Course. Bullseye and me? No better team.”  
  
Nora shot him a look.  
  
“For – Railroad stuff, obviously.”  
  
Piper couldn’t shake the feeling that an expanse was suddenly growing between the two detectives. She thought better than to mention anything, if only because she didn’t fully understand it yet, but she got the impression Deacon noticed it too, because he gave Nora’s hand a little squeeze before withdrawing, settling his weight on his palms behind him in a lazy lean.  
  
Nora reached a tentative hand out toward Nick, and he silently obliged her with a cigarette. Both men had lighters out nearly in tandem, both as if by long-standing habit. Though the lighter in Deacon’s hand was Nora’s – Nick could recognize the little scratches she’d dug into the side, from when she used to count the days in little cross-hatches there – the one she chose to accept was Nick’s, and he saw again some quiet message in her face. It was just as unreadable, but it felt almost like reassurance. For some reason, that burned him.  
  
“How do you two manage to run for your lives after all the cigarettes you smoke?” It was Piper this time, waving away a cloud of smoke that had wafted too close to her nose.  
  
“Well it doesn’t stop me any,” Nick provided, tone indicating he thought that would have been obvious.  
  
“If I need to run, I’m not doing my job right.” Nora mimed holding some kind of rifle and looking down a scope, as if to remind Piper of her usual place on any given battlefield. “Anyway, I haven’t smoked in…”  
  
The silence she drifted into was tense and pulled tight, like a rubber sheet testing its breaking point.  
  
“A long time,” she finished at last, taking another, desperate drag of smoke. “I’m making up for it.”  
  
“Clearly,” Piper teased, but she lapsed into relative silence again, giving room for the story to be told.  
  
“What was the job?” Nick this time, and he was looking hard at Nora, though it was Deacon who answered.  
  
“Sorta where we can’t say too much,” he explained, lifting a hand for a moment to see-saw it back and forth in an indication of some sort of gray area, “boss’ll have my hide if I let anything spill before reporting.”  
  
“You haven’t gone back to HQ?” Piper’s eyes were wide under lifted brows.  
  
“No,” Nora answered solemnly, nursing her cigarette and looking with intense focus at the toe of her sneaker. “I wanted to come here.”  
  
“Oh,” was all Piper could think to say, and she couldn’t stop herself from glancing between synth and spy, ducking her head a little lower like a student who hadn’t done their homework and suddenly feared being called on.  
  
“We _can_ say,” Deacon continued, sliding an arm around his partner’s shoulders very briefly, giving her a comforting little shake, “we heard things about some packages going missing. We’d been shipping them out west, get ‘em as far away from the Commonwealth and all our fun Institute rumors as possible. Safest bet for the least bigots out there. Even if it’s only because they’ve never heard of the big bad boogeyman.”  
  
“But?” Nick prompted.  
  
“We thought it had been going fine for months. Biggest export we’ve had in a long time. But then we got word from one of our contacts in the caravans out that way. Nothing had arrived. Not a single one.” Nora’s voice was cold, her brow tight in only just-contained anger.  
  
Piper breathed out a lung-full of air she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. All those people… “How many had you sent?”  
  
“Less than a hundred, more than twenty,” Deacon answered in typical cryptic fashion, and all Piper could do was stare at Nora and clasp a hand over her mouth.  
  
“Always a week or so apart,” Nora continued gravely, still staring floor-ward with worrying intensity, “trying not to put too many in one caravan. Just a few drifters every so often, no different than normal. Word takes too long to travel between coasts, so we couldn’t wait for confirmation. We got lazy.”  
  
“We didn’t _know_ ,” Deacon tried to interject in a gentle but insistent voice, but Nora just cupped his nearest knee and gave it a squeeze. He fell quiet obediently.  
  
“We thought we’d won, you know? The Commonwealth was only dangerous in a casual, supermutant-around-the-corner, bigots-in-every-settlement kind of way. Normal.” She shrugged. She had Nick had once known a kind of normal that could never be matched by anything the Commonwealth – or presumably the rest of the world – could offer, but they had both long since settled into a new, albeit far more dangerous, humdrum. “If we could get them out, far out, then there’d be nothing for them that the rest of us don’t have to face. We could get them to settlements that could use them. Engineers, technicians, bioscience specialists – they could help rebuild anywhere. It was – it was supposed to be…”  
  
“It was a good plan,” and this time Deacon refused to quiet down, leaning forward just a bit to assert the solidity of his sentiment. “They get freedom, and the world gets hope. It was a _good_ plan.” He sighed, and Nora fell into the silence of her smoking. “It hit us all pretty hard when we heard from our people. We all needed to know what was going on, and we needed to know as fast as possible. Wasn’t a lot of time for standing at the edges and observing on this one.”  
  
“So what did you do?” Piper was engrossed, and this suited Deacon just fine – a little too well, ass loved to tell his stories – but Nick just sat and watched, and smoked, and considered. He wasn’t shy about watching Nora, specifically, as intently as he was. Deacon was a lost cause as far as reading between the lines – he filled that part of the script for his audience, too, and you couldn’t be certain where the bullshit stopped and the truth started. But Nora – he’d been able to read her, once. They’d been partners. They had that trust.  
  
“So we dirtied up, got a tourist the guards and drovers would know the face of, and got on a caravan.”  
  
Piper seemed a little confused by this, knitting her brows in that way she did while she prepared to ask a probing question, but Nick nodded. Smart move. No wonder they hadn’t wanted to tell anyone. Between the objections and the dead giveaways, they wouldn’t be able to maintain a cover much less make it to the caravan in the first place.  
  
“You posed as synths,” he concluded, and Piper’s eyes looked like they were trying to pop out of her head.  
  
“You did _what_?” She was revving up that indignant voice good and hard, though Nick gave a waving gesture in an attempt to get her to pump the break a little.  
  
“It was the fastest way we could reliably get the best information. The last package we’d sent was less than a week before. If they were still getting intercepted, it was the easiest way to find out where and how. It was the best option to _give_ us the best options. We could run the circuit, circle back, and report to HQ so we could figure out how to move forward, where our broken link was.” Nora’s voice was deadpan, and she didn’t look at Piper while she explained. She’d looked at Nick, once and briefly, before settling on the cherry of light at the end of her rapidly shortening cigarette.  
  
“Wait, so—” Piper was holding up a hand like she was prompting a teacher for a question “—why are you telling us any of this? This all seems like the kinda thing you gotta keep under wraps, usually. You said you could compromise—”  
  
“Because we got made,” Deacon answered, bitterness building behind his teeth like acid, “ _fast_.”  
  
“Anything we’ve told you isn’t a secret to them. They didn’t just know we weren’t who we said we were, they knew _us_. They knew – me,” she corrected, faltering slightly. “I think they figured out some things about D, but they damn well knew who I was.”  
  
Deacon shrugged. He wasn’t about to give away anything about himself if he didn’t have to. But the pair of them were leaning a little closer together on the desk, Nora clutching at his shirt again and Deacon absently lifting the cigarette out of her hand to take a drag for himself. They didn’t even seem to notice, it all seemed to run on some kind of unconscious level.  
  
Small pieces of understanding were cropping up for Valentine, though he only vaguely understood their shape.  
  
“We got to the Capital Wasteland,” Deacon continued in a breath of smoke, handing the nearly-spent cigarette back to his partner, “and that was our stop, apparently. They let us think we still had our cover for all of a day, maybe. But something was up. They kept us together.” His face pinched into an unreadable expression at this, and without anyone realizing when or how it had happened, his and Nora’s fingers were intertwined, their grips white-knuckled.  
  
“They separated everyone else,” Nora elaborated, depositing the butt of her cigarette in the too-full ashtray that Nick had scooted forward on the wheels of his chair to hold out for her, “everyone down there was isolated. Except us.”  
  
“Everyone? Down where?” Piper was on the verge of frustrated now. What a time to fall into cryptic half-explanations.  
  
“Synths,” Nick explained, gravel in his voice. “All the packages that had gone unaccounted for.”  
  
Nora looked at him like she was offering some kind of horrible, lead-weight apology. He couldn’t for the life (or – whatever) of him figure out why. What did she have to be sorry for, to him of all people?  
  
“Their facility was in an old subway station. Guess the good doctor liked the underground aesthetic.” Deacon gave a gesture to indicate there might not be any accounting for taste, though his entire demeanor was still hardened, still needle-sharp and made of steel.  
  
“They _who_?” Piper insisted, crossing her arms against a chill they could all feel despite the warm weather.  
  
“Zimmer.” It was Nora’s voice, but you’d only know that if you saw her mouth moving. Those two syllables were almost inhuman – if a statue could talk, Nick thought it might sound something like that. Hardened and empty.  
  
“Who—”  
  
“Guy who dogged after railroad cargo before Ayo.” Nick was explaining again, wanting to lift whatever invisible weight was suddenly holding the agents down – or at least help shoulder some of it. “Here,” he added, leaning back to shuffle a hand around his desk before picking up Nora’s report and handing it over to Piper. “Used to be head of Synth Retention, so you know he was a regular ray of sunshine.”  
  
Piper whipped through the package of papers with the practiced speed of somewhat who read and disseminated for a living. “Ugh,” she curled her lip in disgust, “this is – what kind of experiments?”  
  
Nora looked away. “Nothing good,” was all Deacon would say. That seemed to be enough. None of their imaginations were out of order, and none of them doubted the extent of the Institute’s cruelty.  
  
Nick kicked open a drawer and withdrew the last half of whiskey stored among the spare cigarette packs. He retrieved the two glasses that were still stacked there, and filled them both rather generously. Both agents took one, but only Nora seemed invested in drinking hers. Deacon, for his part, took a grateful sip, but his glass never seemed to really drain.  
  
Eventually, Deacon spoke again, his voice quiet, like he was trying to be gentle about something – to someone, maybe. “Zimmer gave us a great big speech about the technology we squandered, the world we killed, yadda yadda. He…” As his voice drifted, he glanced to his partner, catching something slight in her hand – a little tremor, maybe; the vibration of her empty glass – and gingerly pressed his unfinished drink into her hands. She downed it a bit faster than she meant to, but sighed in a self-calming kind of way after downing it.  
  
“After a while, he left. Some of the science team stayed behind, but most of them were gone. We only knew because they talked about it, sometimes. Nothing specific, just standard ‘things aren’t the same’ chatter.” The hand that was laced with Nora’s loosened its grip a little, but he never let go. “He’d been holding us a couple months by then, so it seemed pretty sudden. After he split, they seemed kinda directionless for a bit.” His jaw grew tight and twitched with the effort of stopping teeth from grinding. “Then they started selling tickets.”  
  
The silence that fell on the room was thick and freezing, an icicle stabbing through everyone’s train of thought. The pair of agents nearly disappeared, quiet as they were, holding onto each other with renewed effort. Their faces were carefully blank, but their hands gripped one another so tightly they shook ever so slightly.  
  
“What…what do you…” Piper couldn’t find words that wouldn’t shrink away in front of the vile possibilities.  
  
“People will pay if they think they can get away with doing harm to a person.” Nora was smiling with no humor, voice like broken glass. “Tell them it’s not really a person at all? More people will pay. No guilty conscience if it’s just some machine.”  
  
Piper felt her recent breakfast rising in her throat; Nick looked sharply away and let his cigarette ash indiscriminately onto the floor. Deacon was silent, looking more defeated than they had ever seen him. But Nora? Nora just talked, low and quiet and unfeeling.  
  
“That was it, for most of the time we were there. No more packages were incoming, so halfway through losing their product,” she spat the word, poison on her tongue, “they started getting real interested in how to keep everyone alive. Brought in some new people, handful of shady doctors. Lots of chems, some surgery. If anyone died after that,” her teeth were bared in an extension of that humorless smile, “they got charged double.”  
  
There was a beat, and she took a breath. “Then…”  
  
“We got out,” Deacon supplied at last, when Nora seemed to flounder in an attempt to wrap the story up. “And now we’re here.”  
  
There seemed to be a gap between Nora’s last recount and the abrupt end of the explanation, but their audience wasn’t really keen to press them at this point.  
  
Silence came heavy again, everyone apparently falling into some kind of reflection. Nora’s and Deacon’s hands had parted, but they were both leaning against the other’s shoulders, as if suddenly spent of their energy. And who could blame them? To live that even once – and then to relive it…  
  
_Normal day_ , Nora had said, and the thought seemed to cut the bottom out of Nick’s world. His brain freefell, moving parts whirring and clicking, jaw joints giving warning creeks as he tested their resistance against gritted teeth.  
  
Distantly, they became aware of the rise in the hustle and bustle of the market, and Nat’s distinct voice ringing out with practiced paper-pushing.  
  
Nora stood, and didn’t look at anyone. “I’ll see if Shaun’s up yet. He probably hasn’t eaten.”  
  
Nick got to his feet at that, flicking his filter into the mountain on the ashtray and gathering the empty plates – and saucepan lid – in order to haul them to the kitchen. “I can do another,” he offered, gesturing to the supply in his arms a little vaguely. Nora just nodded, and turned toward the door with Deacon at her heels.  
  
“I gotta see my favorite little guy,” he said by way of goodbye, and they were gone, Nick shuffling about in the little kitchen and Piper seated in silence, fingers forming a cage over her mouth. Eventually, she looked at the papers she’d let settle in her lap, flipping through them slowly, barely registering their contents.  
  
“So…they’re out there, somewhere. These people.” She spoke at last, above the sizzle of another round of breakfast.  
  
“Somewhere,” Nick agreed, roughly.  
  
“And – and she wants to find them.”  
  
“That’d be my guess.”  
  
“These people…”  
  
Nick said nothing. He added something to the pan that brought the sizzle to a crescendo.  
  
“We gotta find these people, Nick.” Piper’s voice cracked, and Nick’s shoulders pinched with renewed tension. “We gotta – we can’t – we gotta make sure.”  
  
“Yeah,” was really all Nick could say, giving the handle of the pan a little shake. “Yeah. We do.”


	5. Wandering Forlorn

_I used to believe  
I was such a great romancer  
‘til I came home to a woman  
that I could not recognize.  
  
  
  
  
  
_

“So – here’s something I don’t understand.”  
  
Another day had passed, and the quartet were taking advantage of the childless school hours to relax in the sun, tucked away in the little nook above the office. It was relatively secluded, given that it was stuffed behind Arturo’s elevated bullet trailer, and walled off at the back. So Nick had relented a long time ago and set up a table and a couple of chairs, and Piper had since insisted their ongoing investigation be conducted in the fresh air due to the horrible habit of a certain unnamed pair smoking like chimneys whenever they had to think with any level of intensity.  
  
Nick stood near the edge of the roof, leaning against the large, rusted water pipe that bent into the corner of the makeshift little deck, letting his smoke drift outward and upward to mix with the general smell of the city – which, he had pointed out to no avail, was really no better than his office, just more varied. Piper had said that variety was the spice of life, Nora had mentioned that should wouldn’t mind getting outside, and Deacon hadn’t offered much of an opinion one way or the other. So there they were.  
  
Piper had hunkered down in a rickety chair, balancing her boots on the table and thumbing through Nora’s by now well-wrinkled report for the countless time. Nora was seated crisscross-applesauce on the metal sheet of the roof, poring over a few worn out maps of the country that were filled with useless, pre-war information. Her back rested gently against Deacon’s legs, who sat slightly hunched in his own chair, fussing over cobbling together a report of his own. He hated paperwork, and the party was very well aware, given that he had vocalized it at least ten times already.  
  
“Lay it on us,” he mumbled in a grumpy sort of voice, and Nora nudged him gently with her shoulder, smiling faintly.  
  
“What’s this Unknown/M.S. you keep mentioning?” Piper had thumb-marked a few pages with this strange description, noting that it was underlined each time – presumably by Nick.  
  
Deacon looked down at his partner with a face that shouted _really?_ so loudly even his sunglasses couldn’t hide it. Nora carefully did not acknowledge him, though she did pass an apologetic look to Nick’s back. Piper caught this with a quirked brow, glancing between the paper, Nick, and Nora a few times before a funny kind of disbelieving smile slipped onto her face.  
  
“Wait, you don’t mean – you _can’t_ mean…” She looked again at Nora’s neat scrawl, full of pre-war loops and joined-up letters that hadn’t made the transition from pre- to post-war, for the most part. “M.S.,” she pondered, shaking her head and trying out different solutions before finally adding, “There’s no way. You don’t mean Nick’s stranger?”  
  
Nick stiffened a little, blowing a cloud through his teeth and grunting in a way that indicated disapproval.  
  
“Bullseye,” Deacon began, using a tone one might employ to talk a wild-eyed child down from a particularly imaginative fantasy.  
  
“Don’t,” was all Nora had to say, and her partner threw up his hands in a defeated gesture, shaking his head.  
  
“I just wanna go on record saying I’m not completely on board with this.”  
  
“Noted,” she answered stiffly, pulling up from her maps and winding a pencil a little nervously between her fingers. “It’s…a theory,” she began, decidedly not making eye contact with anyone, though Deacon moved his leg just perceptively enough to give her a little more support. She responded by leaning against him a little more firmly. Piper couldn’t put her finger on it, but between those two, something… Well, she had her suspicions, but for once, they weren’t ones she wanted to poke at.  
  
Nick said nothing, but he cocked his head over his shoulder with a mild frown, watching his old partner sidelong.  
  
“Zimmer said some things, and when we were…getting out, I found some files. Nothing concrete,” she added hastily, when Deacon’s hand brushed briefly across the crown of her head. “I’m not putting all my eggs in this basket. It’s just…” She sighed, daring to glance at Nick again, who had turned fully to face her, leaning his opposite shoulder against the pipe and flicking the ash from his cigarette with a thumb.  
  
“I’ve seen Nick’s notes,” Nora pressed on, dropping her gaze a little guiltily, though Nick had only shrugged. He wasn’t really hiding them, and if she’d asked he would have offered them freely. Besides, it wasn’t as if his pet project was much of a secret, anyway. When Piper snooped around, more or less the whole city got informed.  
  
“Some things match up that are sort of – it scared me a little.”  
  
“So you think,” Piper summarized in a _you-can’t-actually-think-this_ voice, “there’s some two-hundred-year-old serial killer popping in and out of existence all around the U.S. playing some kind of vigilante routine?”  
  
Nora fixed her with a surprisingly amused expression. “That’s really the strangest thing you can think of? Look at who you’re talking to.”  
  
“ _You_ don’t magically teleport all around.” She paused. “Anymore,” she added.  
  
Nora laughed good-naturedly, dropping her pencil onto her maps and running her fingers through her hair like a woman who desperately needed a break. A long one. “I know how it sounds. I _really_ do,” this she said with her head tilted back to look at Deacon, and they exchanged another silent conversation over the span of a few seconds. Nick was trying to get used to it. He’d seen it before, but now it seemed practically nonstop. He didn’t really know why it irked him the way it did, and he didn’t particularly want to solve _that_ mystery.  
  
“But I think – it’s complicated. I think he’s real.” She laid down this confession with an obvious “but” hooked on the end, though this didn’t stop Piper from ramping up to talk her back to her senses.  
  
“Blue—”  
  
Nora held up her hands, and Deacon sighed, sitting back in his chair after reaching down to give her shoulder a little squeeze. “Just listen. I think it’s – complicated,” she repeated, and Nick’s eyes narrowed just slightly. He still hadn’t spoken, and that fact was doing nothing for Nora’s hesitation. “He – the Institute thinks he’s real. Or, they think _something_ ’s real, they’ve got records of a project, we got what we could from Tom a while ago.”  
  
“Which miiight go to show how reliable it is,” Deacon finally chimed in, but shut up abruptly at the way Nora’s back stiffened against his shins.  
  
“I didn’t _listen_ to Tom, if that makes any difference.” Her voice had a tinge of bitterness to it. “I just read what he could download from his program. I think around the time they were focused on upgrading the Gen 2’s, they started recording something they called the Multi-presence Subcode.”  
  
“So what does that mean in English?”  
  
“That’s…sort of the problem. All we can reliably decipher is that it was a small string of code that appeared sporadically and spanned across multiple systems. Gen 2’s from entirely different lines would develop it in their idle processes, and they couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. What made it difficult is that it was never whole. It never showed up completely before becoming garbled junk data that got tossed at the end of the day. One Gen 2 would show one string that got cut off halfway through, and a week later another entirely different iteration would show the second half with no interaction between the systems. The department heads were pretty furious about it, but the grunts started to talk about it in their notes like it was…alive.”  
  
“I did say English, right? You gettin’ any of this, Nick?”  
  
“I’m following,” he answered dryly, and finally Nora met his eye, straining with some silent sentiment he couldn’t quite grasp. He was beginning to hate that.  
  
“Well I’m not,” Piper lamented with a huff, depositing the papers on the table and crossing her arms. “Can you dumb it down for those of us who aren’t of the egghead variety?”  
  
Deacon flew to the rescue, though in his usual, sarcasm-laden fashion. “They’d build a bot from the ground up and it would come up with a super-secret code nobody gave it permission to have. Someone else would build another bot and it would have another part of it. Naughty synths.”  
  
Nora nudged him with an elbow, but he merely shrugged. His comfort level was sinking, and though Nick could see it plain as day, he wasn’t _precisely_ sure why. It definitely wasn’t the strangest idea any of them had presented, and a far cry from the strangest truth they had ever experienced. There was something under that general disbelief – something like fear, which was something he couldn’t recall ever seeing Deacon wear.  
  
“So – they named the code? That’s the M.S.?”  
  
“They gave it a term,” Nora answered with a brief hesitation, “it was the general lab team that named it.”  
  
“Think of a bunch of Toms finding something cool and high tech that they didn’t invent.”  
  
“Stacy? Lola? Gwen?”  
  
Deacon cracked a smile, and Nora sighed a little. “The Stranger.”  
  
Piper’s face was torn between several different kinds of disbelief, but Nick was standing straighter, interest piqued, though he wasn’t exactly radiating joy.  
  
“You think he’s in my head.” It wasn’t a question. He wasn’t particularly pleased.  
  
“I think he’s _real_ ,” Nora was almost pleading, looking up at Nick with the same kind of sorry eyes she’d laid on her son a few nights ago. For some reason he didn’t feel like exploring, it only fueled the embers of his crackling new flame.  
  
“You think he’s some – some leftover Institute garbage code.”  
  
“I _really_ don’t, I think he’s…”  
  
“Complicated,” Nick spat, tossing his spent filter to the alley floor below.  
  
“Hey look,” Deacon chimed, all brittle brightness, “you two are out of cigarettes. Piper, you wanna show me where the cigarettes are? Downstairs?”  
  
“Not real—”  
  
“ _Interview_ me, then,” he hissed, getting to his feet and edging his way around Nora to seize the reporter by the elbow and guide her to the upper door of the office.  
  
Footsteps scampered away, one set a little more reluctantly than the other. Rusty hinges creaked. A heavy door fell shut. Nora looked blankly down at her maps. Nick glared skyward.  
  
Minutes passed.  
  
“I don’t have anything conclusive,” Nora spoke up quietly, lifting her legs to fold her knees to her chest, “I don’t have any proof.”  
  
“Spare me the pity.”  
  
“I don’t—”  
  
“You _don’t_ ,” Nick hissed through slightly gritted teeth, scowling in earnest now. “You keep lookin’ at me with that sad mug and you wanna tell me you’re not feelin’ sorry for me?”  
  
“I don’t pity you,” she answered lowly, hunching her shoulders forward. “I sympathize.”  
  
Nick gave a hollow laugh. “You gonna debate semantics with me now?”  
  
“It’s not semantics.” She rolled herself onto her feet, wringing her hands together for a moment or two. “I know what you’re feeling, I think. A little bit, at least. I know what it’s like to have to – fend off pity and doubt.”  
  
Nick scoffed again. “Who pities you, savior of the Commonwealth?”  
  
“Woman out of time with a dead husband and a dead son.” She had flinched at his words, but her tone was sharper now, and she was glaring furiously away from him. And suddenly he felt like a heel.  
  
“Look, I didn’t mean—”  
  
But her eyes turned on him, steely and cold, and he was pierced in a way he’d never felt around her before. It…hurt.  
  
“You can feel whatever way about it, Nick Valentine.” The use of his full name felt like a stab. “I’m asking for your help, I really think I need it. You don’t have to give it to me, and I can go at it on my own. But I think,” she added, tone still icy and uninflected as she turned around to gather the papers Piper and Deacon had left behind, “this is important. I think you could really make a difference. And I think there’s nobody else I’d trust as much to help me. There’s nobody else I’d – really want to be with me through it.” Her slight hesitation was another jab in the chest, and he wished not for the first time he could be a better man with a clearer head.  
  
“Nora – I’m – I’m _trying_ , here.” He was practically begging, and even he couldn’t say precisely for what.  
  
She paused, heaving a little sigh and considering the roof beneath them carefully. “I know,” she breathed, tucking the papers to her chest with one arm and pinching the bridge of her nose with her free hand. “I know. It’s – my fault, really. Everything is so…” She gestured ineffectively at what could have been the whole city, the whole world. “I feel like – like I’m wandering out of the vault all over again.”  
  
Nick moved with considerable trepidation toward her, slowly bracing his good hand against her folded arm. She smiled painfully up at him with glassy eyes, and he wondered how he could feel like an ass and still this angry all at once. “I’m in the reeds, here. This is all…” He imitated her widely indicative gesture helplessly, unable to articulate this – this _thisness_. “Suddenly you’re back, and then…” When his sentence dropped off in the air, the previous night bloomed between them like a tangible thought. A shared and uncertain memory.  
  
A brief kiss that stretched through a decade. Another where he could taste her mouth. A tipsy apology, the awkward end of half a slow-dance. The distance that divided them when she’d curled up in his unused bed and he’d retired to his chair in an empty room. A burning sensation that lit up the long night even after he’d shut off the lamps.  
  
“I want…” He was all ellipses and no substance today. It wasn’t much of a change, really; he wasn’t exactly the chattiest. But he’d never really tried and failed this badly, this many times in a row.  
  
“Tell you what,” she filled the silence between them, voice a little frail. She reached up to fiddle idly with the length of his tie, staring there instead of his face, and he lifted a metal hand to curl gently around hers. “When you figure it out, you let me know. I’ll be here.”  
  
And after scooping up her slightly scattered maps, she was gone – though he did note the sounds of scrambling and quiet exclamations of pain when she’d opened the door.  
  
He sighed, scratching the back of his neck and shoving a wandering wire back into place when it caught on a finger. How could you take the complicated out of being a real person?  
  
  
  
“Well,” Ellie Perkins’ voice greeted the three of them as they stumbled down the stairs (Deacon and Piper both furiously pretending they hadn’t just taken a metal door to the head), “don’t you three look like a storm cloud just rolled in.” Sometime in the while they’d spent on the roof, Ellie had let herself in and made herself useful, tidying up the office space and, Nora noticed with a grateful little laugh, even gathering Shaun’s spare projects that had been slowly finding their way down the stairs.  
  
“Hopefully not with too much radiation.” Piper’s demeanor changed perceptibly as she scurried forward to snake her arms around Ellie’s waist and pull the secretary in for a warm squeeze of an embrace. Deacon and Nora exchanged a short, good-natured glance. But he caught the slightly sad edge to her smile, and naturally braced an arm across the backs of their shoulders.  
  
“Hey,” he spoke low and close to her ear, garnering A Look from Piper (she hated not being ‘in the loop’, as she would call it) to which he paid no mind, “I got you.”  
  
“You’re enough of a nuclear blast all by yourself,” Ellie teased, lighting a blush on the apples of Piper’s cheeks when she placed an affectionate little kiss at the edge of her jaw. “What’s got you all doom-and-gloom?” This she addressed to the three of them at large, turning outwards so she was shoulder to shoulder with Piper, both women hooking an arm around the other’s waist.  
  
Nora shrugged a little apologetically, clearly anticipating some kind of dramatic reaction not entirely unlike Piper’s fond hello. “Detective’s work is never easy?” She presented it like a peace offering, and Ellie just laughed.  
  
“Save it, slick,” she answered with her signature, easygoing smile. “Piper already told me. Sounds like she gave you enough grief for the both of us.” Piper very pointedly did not meet anyone’s eyes, and Nora relaxed with a relieved chuckle.  
  
“It’s good to see you, Ellie.”  
  
And now the woman broke apart from Piper to tangle Nora up in a hug so earnest it made Nora feel strangely guilty. “It’s good to have you back, sweetheart. We were all so worried.”  
  
Nora patted her hands gingerly against Ellie’s spine until she drew back, all smiles and forgiveness. “Sorry about that,” Nora managed, but Ellie just shook her head and laughed again.  
  
“Word is there’s a big new mystery on the table. You all on the case this time?”  
  
“Seems like,” Piper answered, threading her fingers together behind her head and leaning back lazily on one heel. Try as she might, she couldn’t keep the little glow hidden when Ellie was near, and Nora felt a rush of appreciation for the pair of them. They deserved that kind of happiness, more than most people she knew. “It’s got _Big and Complicated_ written all over it,” the reporter added, hitting the consonants hard in that way she had whenever something had captivated her interest.  
  
“So nothing new, huh?” Ellie teased, and Piper simply grinned. “What’s the next step, then?” She prompted, just as knowing as she had ever been – she was _good_ at her job. “You look like you’ve hit an impasse.” She gestured vaguely to the papers and maps bundled in Nora’s arms, who shrugged a little in response.  
  
“Sort of. We might need to travel.”  
  
“Far?” Ellie’s tone was a little flatter, and she leaned her weight to one side so that her hip was flush with Piper’s. Nora’s face was a series of apologies.  
  
“Piper doesn’t have to come,” she offered, glancing desperately toward her friend in question, who, for her part, was shifting into _oh-no-you-don’t_ gear with an all-too-familiar wrinkle between her brows.  
  
“Like hell—”  
  
Ellie silenced her just by gently looping an arm around her, gaze still steady on Nora. “I think we both know that’s not going to happen. Even if I could get her to stay she’d be pacing the place and tearing her hair out. Where do you need to go?”  
  
“For now, only as far as Goodneighbor,” was Nora’s slightly hesitant answer. “But, after that…maybe farther.” _Maybe a lot farther_ was the unsaid sentiment that thickened the air of the office, and Ellie’s lips bunched up to one corner as she considered her friend and then her partner carefully.  
  
Deacon watched the toe of his sneaker. Piper fiddled with the hand Ellie had planted on her side. Nora and Ellie simply watched each other, impassive consideration running headlong against apologetic guilt.  
  
“What’s in Goodneighbor?” She asked at last, and though Nora opened her mouth to answer, it was not her voice that spoke.  
  
“An old friend.” Nick was quietly descending the stairs by then, and Nora wondered how long he’d been standing at the top of them, listening and waiting. _A good detective knows when it’s best to just observe_.  
  
Ellie cocked a brow above a dawning smirk, and she leaned a little more firmly into Piper, who met her weight gratefully and looped her arms around the woman yet again, hands knotting above her opposite hip. “Any particular one?”  
  
Nick used the excuse of lighting another cigarette, already pinned in his mouth, to keep his gaze from meeting anyone else’s. “A specialist. Only doc I’ve ever trusted.”  
  
“Well you give Amari my regards.” She turned her eyes at last on Deacon, who was scuffing his shoe against the floor and fiddling idly with the fabric of Nora’s shirt at her shoulder. “You’ve been awfully quiet, stranger.”  
  
She sensed the entire room flinch, but was uncertain as to why.  
  
“Me? Oh I’m just arm candy.” Deacon’s smirk fought to ease the tension, and Ellie’s laugh helped that along just fine.  
  
There was a quick, debating kind of chatter between Piper and Ellie, and Deacon lapsed back into easy silence. Nick and Nora shared a brief look of mutual and indecipherable apologies, and the fingertips of his metal hand gave a feather-light brush to the backs of her knuckles as their arms hung idle between them. She smiled a little sadly and turned away, and he sighed in a cloud of smoke.  
  
“Ellie,” Nora began in a tone twisted with regret, “I hate to ask—”  
  
“You don’t have to,” she cut off, smiling and shrugging. “Nat’ll be glad to have him over, and I’m sure he’d like something other than omelets, even if he’s too polite to say.”  
  
They all laughed at this, even Nick in his grumpy kind of way, and they were glad of the truce Ellie somehow cultivated between all of them.  
  
“So when do you all have to head out?”  
  
Instinctively, all eyes were on Nora, and she felt the weight of the decision with perceptible reluctance. Probably, Nick supposed, she hated the idea of having to make the decision to leave – again. And so soon. He knew none of them would hold it against her if she chose to take a break, to stay for a few days, a week, even a month before chasing this lead. But that wasn’t Nora. She wasn’t one to sit on her hands when there was a threat out there.  
  
“Tomorrow,” she sighed at last, hugging her papers and maps a little closer to her chest. “In the morning.” Deacon braced her shoulder a little tighter. Nobody would have accused her of making an easy choice.

 

 

“You can’t,” Shaun’s voice was a desperate, squeak of a plea, “you just got here.”  
  
Nick leaned against the wall at the base of the stairs, opening and closing the lid of his lighter in a fidgety way. He could hear the pair of them, seated on Shaun’s bed, and he knew Nora was trying to keep it together, could hear the strain in her voice, too.  
  
Ellie and Piper had snuck off to ostensibly “pack” for the trip, though Deacon had his own suspicions about the advantage of a temporarily empty house. He sat in Nick’s old chair, heels kicked up on the desk and head lolling back. His eyes remained fixed on the corner of ceiling he knew supported mother and child, and he tried not to think about his partner’s heartbreak.  
  
“Honey – I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t important. I won’t be gone for long, I promise.”  
  
“But last time—”  
  
“I know,” her voice cracked, causing both men below to wince, “I’m so sorry, Shaun, I really am. But I _will_ be back soon this time.”  
  
“Can’t you take me with you?”  
  
“It’s safer for you here. You’ll be with Ellie and Nat, and I won’t worry – I know you’ll be okay.”  
  
“Don’t you want to see me anymore?”  
  
Three hearts fluttered with pain at that.  
  
“Oh – sweetie – of course, _of course_ I do. But I want you to be safe. You and Nat and Ellie and…everyone. So I have to do this.”  
  
“Is it – is it because of what I am?” Shaun’s voice was quiet, but his question dropped like a lead weight.  
  
Deacon sat up fast enough to give himself whiplash. Nick bit through the filter of his cigarette, coughing out the piece that fell into his mouth and frantically patting down his front to find the lit end before it burned anything important.  
  
“…what do you mean, honey?”  
  
“Because – I’m like Nick. Kind of. I’m not…really real.”  
  
Nick hissed a quiet “ _shit_ ” as he caught the smoking end of his cigarette in the fingers of his good hand, Deacon’s fists clenched and unclenched on the desktop.  
  
“Shaun.” Nora’s voice was suddenly stern, so much so that it startled both men in the office. “You _are_ like Nick. And that means you’re just as real as anyone else. And it doesn’t mean you’re not my son. And it will never – _ever_ ,” she emphasized, in that same, iron voice, “stop me from loving you. Do you understand me?”  
  
There came no audible response from the boy, but after a little while there was the faint sound of muffled sobs, and Nora’s gentle and patient shushing layered over them.  
  
Later that night, when she was pulling the covers up around him, she asked quietly, “How long have you known?”  
  
“I don’t know,” was his answer, “maybe always? I just…feel things sometimes. Sometimes Miss Curie visits and talks about things and it just…makes sense.”  
  
“Are you upset I didn’t tell you?”  
  
Shaun seemed to consider this for a little while, thumbing the ragged edge of his blanket. “I don’t know. How would you have told me?”  
  
She laughed a little sadly, brushing a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I thought about it for a long time. I don’t know how I would want someone to tell me. I don’t really know if I would want them to tell me at all.”  
  
“But you’re not a synth,” Shaun objected mildly, and she chuckled again.  
  
“That I know of.” Nora lifted one shoulder in a kind of half shrug. “And if I was, I don’t think it would matter too much. I’d still be me. You’d still be you.”  
  
“I think it’s probably important to know what you are,” Shaun ventured, and Nora considered this in earnest.  
  
“The what,” she concluded at last, “I don’t think matters too much. The _who_ is what counts.”  
  
“What’s the difference?”  
  
“Well,” she began, forced to unpack her own opinions in that way that was so entirely Shaun – he brought that out in people. It made her rather proud. “The what is just sort of the container. The who is the person inside. The choices you make, the things you believe are right. Have those things changed any since you found out?”  
  
He paused. “No,” was his answer at last.  
  
“Then what do you think?”  
  
His silence lasted a little longer this time, a sleepy smile slowly sliding onto his face. “I love you, Mom.”  
  
“I love you too, kiddo,” she beamed down at him, leaning in to plant a kiss to the crown of his head. “Get some sleep. I’ll be here to see you off to school in the morning, okay?”  
  
He nodded and rolled comfortably to his side, and she fished a cigarette out from its place tucked behind her ear, sliding it into the corner of her mouth and quietly opening the door to the roof.  
  
It didn’t surprise her that Nick was already out there, nursing his own cigarette, but she did suck in a bit of a gasp when he cleared his throat to announce himself. Here in the dark, he blended in before her eyes adjusted, and he could make himself go so quiet sometimes.  
  
“Jumpy,” he noted, shifting his shoulder against the wall so he could better look at her. His eyes and the red cherry on the end of his cigarette were the first things she could make out, and she made her way slowly closer, letting her eyes get comfortable with the darkness in the process.  
  
“Sometimes,” she answered, breaching the dim glow of his stare and his smoke. When he recognized the cylinder in the corner of her mouth, he held out his own, and with a strange kind of silent intimacy, she sucked the heat of his cigarette into her own.  
  
They stayed like that for a little while, silently trading clouds, watching the alley below and the patches of stars above in turns.  
  
“You ever gonna give me the whole story?” It was a little selfish, he knew, but that struggling anger in him wanted to escape, pried its petty way to the surface when it could.  
  
“Nick…” She gave a kind of exasperated sigh, gripping her filter between two fingers and rubbing her forehead with the backside of that thumb. They watched each other for a few minutes longer, the night breeze carrying bits of ash away from them.  
  
“Hey.” At last, she reached out to him, and so gingerly he could barely feel it, hooked just the very tips of her fingers into the ragged lower edge of his jaw. “C’mere.” Her touch was so light as to not be there, but when she drew him forward, he followed easily, stooping a little lower so their noses nearly touched. The pad of her thumb brushed the corner of his mouth, and when his lips parted just slightly in response, she pursed her lips and blew a precise stream of smoke into the space he provided. Her eyes were cool and distant, but locked intently on his, and Nick could feel his processors heating, his moving parts straining against one another in an incalculable fit.  
  
There was some kind of tacit, intimate communication there that he could feel the edges of but just couldn’t quite gain purchase on. It was driving him mad.  
  
“I’m doing what I can, Nick,” she whispered, and he could taste her breath. “I’m trying, too.”  
  
Her smoke twisted up into the night air through the side of his neck, and seemed to carry with it all of his sense. Unthinking, he closed the gap between them, pulled her into the warmth of his coat, kissed her like the first taste of water in an endless desert. He’d feel guilty and complicated about it later, but that seemed like a problem for Future Nick. For Nick Right Now, with her so warm against him, he was content to give his common sense a break.  
  
  
  
In the morning, the office was packed to bursting with guests for breakfast – which, thankfully, Ellie handled this time. The room was alight with chatter and laughter, and Nora sank into the warm, easy feeling with palpable gratitude. Deacon flicked a tarberry across the makeshift table (the desks joined together back-to-back). She caught it in her mouth, which started a bit of a war between all of them, with Nat and Shaun soundly taking the victory by juggling berries onto one another’s waiting tongues simultaneously. There was a round of applause for this, and pair bowed theatrically in appreciation.  
  
They saw the kids off to school as one large, strangely parental group, though Nora and Shaun shared a tight, slightly overlong hug and a short whisper of a conversation that Nick couldn’t quite make out over the general din of so many people in so small a space.  
  
When the troupe had sorted through and confirmed the contents of their respective packs, Ellie saw them all off to the gate. In the shadow of the protective hunk of rusted steel, she took Piper’s face lovingly between her palms. “Be safe,” she instructed, and Piper’s hands curled affectionately around her wrists. Ellie planted on her a kiss that garnered a whistle from Deacon (which earned him an elbow in the stomach from Nora, turning his whistle into a little gasp for the air she’d knocked out of him), and the pair laughed against each other for a moment or two.  
  
With another short peck, Ellie turned to take up Nora’s hands in her own, squeezing them gently. “You take care of them. These two love to push their luck.”  
  
Nora had promised to do her best and Piper had rolled her eyes while Deacon crafted some smart comment about vaults and gangsters. “That was one time,” Nick had stated, a kind of generalized frown settling onto his face. They left the city in a little wave of laughter.  
  
Nora took point first, and Deacon fell naturally to bring up the rear. As they picked their way across the ruins, a gun in every hand, Piper voiced the question she’d been simmering on for the past day.  
  
“So what’s the plan with Amari?”  
  
“We’re gonna ask the doc if she can’t fish some code out of yours truly,” Nick answered, through the side of his mouth – a habit of his in the field, when his concentration was only minimally on the conversation.  
  
“The multi-whatever?”  
  
“That’s the plan.”  
  
“So this is the Brain Train Take Two?”  
  
“Synthetic boogaloo,” Nora murmured through a smirk, mostly to herself, though it earned a gruff kind of laugh from Nick.  
  
“What?” Piper’s voice was all confusion.  
  
“It’s some old world thing, trust me.” Deacon’s voice carried from the back, and Nora tossed him a not-so-apologetic smile over her shoulder. “They do this all the time. It’s actually kind of annoying,” he added, tone ridiculously bright.  
  
“That your professional opinion?” But Nora’s voice was easy, her teasing toothless.  
  
“Ugh, pissing contest aside,” Piper tried to steer them back to the topic at hand.  
  
“Pft, ‘cause I’d win,” Deacon murmured in something like a pout.  
  
“You wish,” was Nora’s reply, not quite under her breath.  
  
“ _Children_ ,” Piper scolded, and Nick scoffed without any bite in it. “Why do we think Nick has the multi-whosit anyway?”  
  
Nora didn’t answer. Deacon kept his mouth shut, for once. So Nick begrudgingly took on the duty, replying in a kind of prolonged sigh. “Because I’ve seen the stranger.”  
  
“So what does that mean?”  
  
“It _might_ be,” he explained a little reluctantly, “that it’s how I’m interpreting the rogue code.”  
  
“Older synths are more like – really smart, mobile terminals. Everything is pretty literally ones and zeros,” Deacon offered what little expertise he had to provide. “Nicky here’s got an authentic human personality. Humans tend to resist things they can’t understand. Could be the code’s getting processed kinda like a person.”  
  
“So, like,” Piper ventured thoughtfully, “a synth hallucination?”  
  
Nick grit his teeth and Nora stopped so suddenly that Piper nearly ran into her back. “No,” she answered firmly, shifting so she could look back at the group sidelong, keeping at least half her attention on their surroundings. “A hallucination isn’t tangible, no one else can see it.”  
  
“That sort of sounds like—”  
  
“The code is physically there. You can see it; you could interpret it if you had the know-how. If that’s what it is, if it’s the subcode – it’s more like a…ghost, I guess.”  
  
“Also not real,” Deacon piped up before he could stop himself. Nora shot him such a venomous look that he physically shrank back, mumbling, “I’m not saying – I’m just saying.”  
  
“A _presence_ , then. A kind of – entity. If Nick’s processing it like a person, then I think it’s trying to…communicate with him, somehow.”  
  
“Like, have a conversation, or…?” Piper’s tone was trying to walk a fine and gentle line, simultaneously battling against her ludicrous and natural curiosity.  
  
“I don’t know,” Nora admitted, turning back ahead and starting the group off again. “Something like that, maybe. The only thing we know for sure is that whatever it is, the Institute couldn’t control it, and it had them scared. And angry. It’s practically all Zimmer’s logs talked about, from what I could gather. It was kind of hard to parse. He was kind of…”  
  
“Unhinged,” Deacon supplied darkly, and met no argument from Nora.  
  
“So,” Piper began, in that tone she used when she wanted to summarize information to get a better handle on it, “powerful people are afraid of this ghost in the machine –” Nick grunted at this “—and some half-boiled Institute bigwig got driven the rest of the way crazy thinking about it. And we want to get close to this thing because?”  
  
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” was Nick’s flat answer, his frown stretching deeper. “Not exactly sure I like where I fit into that equation.”  
  
“It might be nothing,” Nora said, in a voice that clearly said ‘it’s definitely something.’ “But if it’s something – bad. If it’s dangerous—”  
  
“Which it will be.”  
  
“—shut up, Deacon.”  
  
“Shutting up, boss.”  
  
“If it’s too dangerous,” Nora repeated, her voice hardening into the same iron she’d used to reassure Shaun the night before, “then we pull out—”  
  
“ _Ye-heah_ we do.”  
  
“—shut _up_ , Deacon.”  
  
“Sorry, sorry.”  
  
“I’m not putting Nick – I’m not putting _anyone_ in danger. If it’s something we can’t handle, then we don’t.”  
  
“So what’s Plan B then?” It was Nick’s voice this time, and there was a touch of concern at its edges.  
  
“I’m – working on it.”  
  
“Well, _I’m_ definitely reassured.”  
  
“ _Deacon_.”  
  
“Shutting up, shutting up.”  
  
All at once, Nora lifted a hand from beneath her rifle, holding it up as though signaling a turn out the window of a car. The group halted obediently, all voices hushed. They hunkered down as one, assuming such reflexively natural fight-or-flight positions that Nora would have been strangely proud if she’d seen it.  
  
Heavy thumps from around the corner. A very distant, chilling beep repeating like a countdown.  
  
“Mutants,” she murmured, and they closed ranks without needing to be told. She signaled forward, and Nick and Piper immediately took up ready positions against either side of the mouth of an alley. Nora was nimbly scrambling up a decrepit fire escape, and Deacon lowered his gun with a frustrated sigh.  
  
“I’m the bait,” he whispered to himself, “again. Of course I’m the bait.” Nora’s hiss came from somewhere above him, and he waved it away with an exasperated grumble. Dutifully, he crept a little further along the alley, ducking low. When he’d gone far enough to make out some green-tinted movement around the corner, he sighed again and stood a little taller. He let his rifle hang loose on its strap across his body, and cupped his hands around his mouth to carry his voice farther.  
  
“ _Heeeeeey my, uh, fine green fellows! How about some free human haunch? Devilishly handsome and only slightly irradiated!_ ”  
  
Piper and Nick rolled their eyes in tandem. Nora smirked down the length of her scope.  
  
Deacon was already backing up when the shuffle of heavy bodies began to grow near. “Aaaanytime, Bullseye,” he muttered to himself, swallowing dryly. When the blood-curdling beep-beep-beep of a potential explosion hurried towards its fellows, and Deacon could see three of them – one with its fist around that mini-nuke he fucking _knew_ was coming – shoulder to shoulder and marching across the rapidly dwindling yards between them, his voice broke. “Thiiis is a little _close for comfort_!”  
  
Light blinded them. Sound rushed out of the world. A wave of heat pushed him back onto his ass at the feet of Nick and Piper, his sunglasses slightly askew on his nose.  
  
Nora’s aim was steady as ever, and she only needed one target. From her perch on the edge of a half-dilapidated roof, a single silenced bullet hit home in the heart of that mini-nuke. Three green bodies went flying apart from one another, and from themselves.  
  
Sight and sound fell back into life all at once, and Deacon’s ears filled with a light ringing and the crackle of cracking and smoldering asphalt. “Shit,” he breathed, and two voices above him laughed with a sense of relief.  
  
Nora dropped back down to the ground from a rusty ladder, absorbing the shock in a crouch and smiling a little cockily. Piper rested with a relaxing breath against the brick at her back, and Nick shifted his weight less aggressively on his feet.  
  
“You know,” he said, adjusting the tilt of his hat slightly, “I’m not sure I’ll ever really get tired of that.”  
  
“Yeah,” Deacon groused, “well I’m glad _someone_ ’s having fun.” But Nick was holding his hand – his good hand, very deliberately – down to him, and Deacon took it with a relenting kind of chuckle. “ _You_ don’t have to worry about ending up as a bag of meat.”  
  
“You know, they tried that once,” Nick recalled, to the skeptical looks of the rest of the group. “Ended up arguing whether I was really human. It’s all the metal, see?” He gestured a little expansively to the whole of himself. “Gets stuck in their teeth.”  
  
Nora snorted, but Piper, ever the curious one, raised a brow. “So what’d you do?”  
  
Nick shrugged. “Told ‘em I was the vegetarian option. Made tracks while they tried to figure that one out.”  
  
They laughed. Nora met his eyes with a genuine smile that sent an arrow through him. Briefly, her hand brushed his metal fingers, and there was that silent effort of communication again. But he thought he could understand it, this time. He was pretty certain he could recognize gratitude – though he wasn’t entirely sure for what.  
  
They set out again, spirits a little higher.


	6. Your Nature Inextinguishable, Indestructible

_When I pressed her for a reason  
she refused to even answer.  
It was then I felt the stranger  
kick me right between the eyes._

 

 

They decide, with surprisingly little deliberation, to make camp. The sun is a few hours yet from setting, but they have just killed a few metaphorical birds with one stone, and Nora is eager to get some more practice in before it gets too dark. MacCready, for his part, is always willing to oblige. He’s a little…eager for Nick’s taste, but if it really bothers him, he doesn’t mention it.  
  
The double-decker overpass is declared safe from the Gunner troop that had been occupying it, and noted to be so easily defensible that it would be more trouble for less worth to try and strike a camp farther out. So Nora signals the Minutemen with a flare, and in good time they confirm on the radio. Another settlement given peace, another alliance forged. Another potential safehouse for the Railroad. And, as if that wasn’t enough, a new weight off Mac’s shoulders that brings an infectious kind of grin to his face. All in all, not a bad day.  
  
So Deacon and Nick set up loose cinderblocks to house a fire, and Deacon wanders off to “secure the area” conveniently when it comes time to warm up their rations. Though Nick grumbles, pointing out that he doesn’t even _need_ the food he’s preparing, he sets about doing it just the same. It isn’t much – three cans of Pork’n’Beans, and not a lot can be done to make them palatable, but they are at least always more bearable when heated.  
  
Nora and Mac are perched like two strange birds on the thick, rusted railings that face sunward, both with long rifles secured against their shoulders, both heads tilted to peer intently down their scopes.  
  
“Okay. Pick your target,” Nora demands, though her voice carries a smile with it.  
  
“Don’t rush me.”  
  
“I’m not letting you wait until it’s too dark so you can say you win on _a technicality_ again.”  
  
“You’re just raw ‘cause you lost.”  
  
“Pick a target, Mac!”  
  
“Okay, okay!” He laughs, and slowly sweeps his magnified vision along the ground far below, finally settling at a leftward angle. “There. Middle of the zero on that bent sign.”  
  
“The speed limit sign?”  
  
“The what?”  
  
“The –” she laughs a little, fixing her mind to a post-war point of view “—the white one, just right of the cowpie.”  
  
“Gross,” MacCready chuckles in that low, childlike way of his, “but yeah.”  
  
“Got it.”  
  
A silent minute passes. A sound not unlike a can with high-pressure contents being viciously punctured cracks through the air, and Nora watches the sizeable hole appear under the upper curve of a long-worn zero warning long-dead drivers to stay below 70.  
  
“Lucky,” Nora hisses, but her body stills like a cat on the hunt, and Mac keeps his scope pointed at his selected target.  
  
She shoots. Her suppressor imitates MacCready’s in its delivery, but her bullet only serves to clip the corner of the sign. She swears quietly, and Mac lets out a triumphant, “Ha!”  
  
He finally lowers his rifle, grinning at her. “That’s Brahmin!”  
  
She frowns, dropping her gun to her lap as well to glare perplexedly at him. “No it isn’t, I’ve still got an N.”  
  
“No,” he declares, more than a little smugly, “that was N. The weird tree was ‘I’ and you got M on the fence post a few turns ago.”  
  
Her brows knit in a moment of mental arithmetic, and she sighs in frustrated defeat. “ _Fine_. What’s your price?”  
  
He doesn’t even hesitate. He’s been planning this. “I want your Unstoppables #107.”  
  
“What!” She is positively affronted at the very idea. “No way! It took me two hundred years to find a copy!”  
  
“Don’t be stingy. It’s not even in mint condition.”  
  
“It’s probably the last one left! Ever!”  
  
“You’re being an _awful_ sore loser about this,” Mac chides in a sing-song voice, and she replies with an annoyed grunt. “If you’re that mad about it, win it back from me. Look.”  
  
He slings his rifle around to dangle against his back, and reaches out to lift the muzzle of Nora’s with one hand, and gingerly situate the stock against her shoulder with the other. “Your form is still good. You’re just shooting too fast. This far away, the advantage is taking your time. It’s not like your pistol, it’s a lot more precise.”  
  
She is peering down her scope again, shifting her grip to match the way he positions her. “I’m not used to the kick.”  
  
“Better now that you’ve got the silencer though, yeah?”  
  
“Yeah, but I keep expecting it to pop me in the face.”  
  
He laughs a little, but not unkindly. “It’s an adjustment, but trust me, it’s much better to learn on an unmodded gun. You get a better feel for it all around. See, it’s not gonna pop up nearly as much, all the kick’s gonna be right here.” He pats the back of her curved shoulder with an open palm to indicate, and she rolls the joint to better brace it against the butt of the gun.  
  
“It’s gonna be practically straight back. You can’t flinch like you’re expecting it to come up because it’ll throw off your shot. You gotta be ready for it here, and use your hand to keep it balanced. Try for the zero again.”  
  
  
  
Silenced shots punctuate the crackle of the cooking fire, which currently has most of Nick’s attention.  
  
“You believe she used to be a lawyer?”  
  
Deacon appears at his shoulder as if out of thin air, and Nick wrangles himself in time to keep from jumping just a little at the surprise.  
  
“Military law,” Nick notes by way of explanation.  
  
“Yeah, but all that means is Basic like a million years ago. Doesn’t exactly prepare her to be raining silent death down on enemies of the Commonwealth.”  
  
“She picks up quick.”  
  
“That’s a bit of an understatement.”  
  
“She’s…definitely unique.” Nick doesn’t understand why he feels like he owes Deacon any kind of justification, and that fact alone only adds to his slightly surly demeanor.  
  
“One of a kind, our Bullseye,” Deacon agrees.  
  
“How come you always call her that?” Mac and Nora have torn themselves away from their game, and he pops an unceremonious squat on a cinderblock with his eyes on Deacon.  
  
“It’s all codenames in the Railroad,” Nora explains as she takes up residence on a chair with rather severely bent legs. “Even have to use codenames to talk about you guys. I got to pick ‘em, though, since you technically aren’t agents.”  
  
“You gave us codenames?” MacCready’s face is alight with youthful interest, his pinched features stretching into an anticipatory grin. “What’s mine?”  
  
Deacon hides a snicker as he’s handed his serving by Nick, and he sits lazily on the ground beside Bullseye. Nora doesn’t look up at Mac, but she’s grinning a little mischievously into her portion of beans. “Mungo,” she answers.  
  
“ _What_!” The sheer force of offense in Mac’s tone sets them all laughing, and he huffs into his can of food, jabbing a spoon into its contents viciously. “What’s Nick’s, then?”  
  
“Robogart.”  
  
Nick snorts despite himself, but Mac is only further incensed.  
  
“That’s not fair! What does that even mean?”  
  
“It’s an old world thing,” Deacon explains, feigning an overdramatic sneer, “that’s kinda their _thing_.”  
  
“That’s dumb,” Mac grouses, and Nora leans down to ruffle his hair and knock his hat a little askew. He shifts a shoulder to shove her off, but there’s no force behind it, and a traitor of a little smile is already tugging at his mouth.  
  
“Relax, kid,” Nick chimes in, and Nora wonders not for the first time if he keeps employing that nickname just to see the way it makes MacCready’s nose wrinkle in distaste. “It’s not all bad. I have my uses.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Like this here cooler I found with cold beer inside.”  
  
“Cold!” Nora practically cries.  
  
“Beer!” Is Mac’s immediate reaction.  
  
“I’m Spartacus!” Deacon shouts with conviction. They ignore him.  
  
Nick passes the bottles around, even taking one for himself. They drink in satisfied silence for a little while before Mac speaks up again, voice navigating a mouth full of pork-and-beans.  
  
“So Nick. You can eat and drink, right?” Nora swats his shoulder, but Nick seems unfazed.  
  
“Eating’s more trouble than it’s ever worth, but I can drink just fine.”  
  
“But you don’t have to?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“So like, when you do drink – where does it go?”  
  
Deacon guffaws out loud and Nora stuffs a fist in her mouth to ineffectively silence her laughter.  
  
Nick’s expression is all grump, no fun. “Some of it gets recycled into the cooling system,” he answers in a stoic voice, “and everything that doesn’t make it through the filter gets let out through exhaust.”  
  
It takes a little while, but sudden, horribly delighted glee takes hold of MacCready’s face, and Nick knows instantly that he has made a dire mistake. “So – so wait. You’re telling me you _fart_ out everything you drink?”  
  
There’s no controlling the laughter now, and while Deacon and Mac enjoy it openly, Nora at least turns her face away while she tries to get control of herself.  
  
“That’s not how I’d put it,” Nick mutters – then, more loudly: “Laugh it up, wiseass. I know where you all sleep.”  
  
“Are you threatening to fart on us?” Nora can’t help herself, and Nick fixes her with an _et tu, Brute?_ expression while the raucous laughter redoubles.  
  
  
When night descends, Mac has tucked himself up in the back of a broken-open bus, while Nora and Deacon have set up sleeping bags on the roof of the vehicle and lie side by side in opposite orientation. Nick quietly tends the dying fire, relaxed against the back cement guard of the overpass, legs sprawled comfortably in front of him.  
  
“So,” Deacon prods his partner’s shoulder with his nearest foot, “you still thinking about stepping down as the celebrated leader of the Minutemen?”  
  
“You know,” she answers, smacking his toes away with a smirk, “for someone who claims not to like the minutemen, you care an awful lot about how they’re run.”  
  
“Hey, I told you I like what you’ve done with them. I just don’t have a lot of faith they’ll maintain their good standing if you’re not there holding the leash.”  
  
Nora sighs, tucking her hands behind her head. “I just – can’t, you know? Everything with the Railroad, with all the new synths out like armies – it feels like it’s all coming to a head. I can’t juggle both. The Minutemen are on their feet again, and I can’t really be a good ‘general’ if I’m always flying under the radar and going radio silent.”  
  
“You thought about who you’re gonna name as your replacement?”  
  
“Well, my first instinct was Preston. But he told me ‘no’ in no uncertain terms when I asked him. I can see where he’s coming from, really. He’s a great second. It lets him maneuver with authority but he doesn’t have to shoulder the responsibility. He can still be a peer to troops on the ground, keep his hand on the pulse. It’s a good position for a man like him.”  
  
“Makes sense,” Deacon agrees, rolling onto his side and propping his head in an open palm so he can look down the length of her sleeping bag at her. “So what was your second instinct?”  
  
“I was thinking Glory, actually.”  
  
“What!” His voice is a laugh of disbelief, and she tilts her head up to match his gaze.  
  
“I’m serious! Think about it. It’s tactically sound. She’s not a known associate of the Railroad, like me, so we don’t look like we’re trying to play puppetmaster. But she maintains the interests of synths, and we still have the Minutemen as close allies, and unrestricted access to their safehouses. Plus, she’s a tough little shit. No one will look at her and think she’s not capable of leading an army.”  
  
“Yyyyyeah…” Deacon’s voice is entirely unconvinced. “But she’s also pigheaded and rash and foulmouthed and she does all her thinking with her gun.”  
  
“I thought you liked Glory!”  
  
“Love her! Still wouldn’t put her in charge.”  
  
“Well, I’m pigheaded and rash and all that.”  
  
“You hide it better.”  
  
She laughs, sitting up and stretching her back by reaching forward to wrap her fingers around her toes. “Glory has a really strong sense of right and wrong. Her ethics are clear cut, right there on the surface. That’s the kind of decisiveness a leader needs. It’s not like she’d be going without counsel. Preston’s a hell of a voice to have in your ear. And Ronnie practically makes it her mission in life to play devil’s advocate no matter what position you’re taking. Anyway,” she throws her hands up in a dismissive gesture, “it’s moot right now. I haven’t asked her, and I won’t until things die down.”  
  
“Maybe that’ll give you time to come to your senses.”  
  
Nora gives his nearest leg an admonishing smack, shaking her head and freeing her legs from her sleeping bag in order to swing them over the edge of the roof.  
  
“Where are you going?” Deacon’s tone is almost a whine. How dare she abandon such a decorated conversationalist!  
  
“I gotta pee,” she answers, sliding down to the ground, “that okay with _you_ , mother?”  
  
“How dare you use that tone of voice with me,” Deacon replies, all affront and parental disappointment, “you’re grounded for a week, young lady.”  
  
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Nora chuckles through mock-petulance. She’s already walking away when Deacon hisses after her: “You wait until your father hears about this!”  
  
She doesn’t immediately return to the bus when she comes back from a more private section of the overpass. Instead, she enters the low glow of the fire, and taps the bottom of one of Nick’s shoes with her toes. “Hey, old man,” she greets, tucking a chunk of hair behind one ear, “mind if I sit?”  
  
“You’re no spring chicken yourself, you know.” But his tone is friendly, and he scoots to one side slightly as if to make room for her.  
  
“Yeah,” Nora agrees, lifting his arm at the wrist and tucking herself under it, pulling his coat open a little so as to include herself in some of its warmth, “I’m just better preserved.”  
  
“Oh, so it’s personal remarks, now.” He’s smiling slightly in the flickering light of the embers, and he lets her curl up at his side without complaint. When she drapes his arm around the back of her neck, he pulls her in just a little bit, mindful not to let the dwindling cigarette clamped between two metal fingers drift too close to her hair, and she rests her head snugly against his shoulder.  
  
They sit like this for a while, sharing a comfortable silence. Eventually she plucks the cigarette out of his grip and tucks it into the corner of her own mouth, freeing her hands to examine the skeletal fingers resting over her shoulder. “Can you feel with this hand?”  
  
“A little,” he shrugs, flexing his joints against her probing fingertips. “Mostly pressure, some temperature. Most of the sensory network is woven into the skin.” He doesn’t resist as she gently tests the extent of movement in each finger, in the stretch of each knuckle, in the servo at his wrist. When she briefly brushes her lips against the back of the metal plate that is his palm, however, he feels his system grind to a sudden halt.  
  
“Does it, uh, bother you?” It’s a stupid question, and he knows it. He’s just talking for the sake of saying something – anything. Nothing good ever comes of that.  
  
“Have I _ever_ given you reason to think that?” Her tone is rather stern, even as she slips the filter out of her mouth and passes the cigarette back to him, which he gratefully accepts in the fingers of his good hand, thankful to have some excuse to fidget.  
  
“No, but—”  
  
“Then don’t.” He quiets under the scolding in her voice, and after a little while she heaves a small sigh. “Feels like things are about to get really big really fast. Don’t need you doubting me.”  
  
“Never,” Nick answers, far more immediately than he intends to, but he stops thinking about it when it coaxes a wide smile from her. “With ya ‘til the end.”  
  
She nods happily, and returns her head to the crook of his neck and shoulder. He gives in and turns his head slightly to tuck her under his chin. They fall into easy quiet again.  
  
“Nick?” Nora asks eventually.  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“What happens when you eat?”  
  
  
  
  
The Third Rail smelled like an asscrack, and MacCready intimated as much – though in less colorful language – to the woman on the stool to his left.  
  
“Yeah,” she answered in an Irish lilt, “it’s great, isn’t it?”  
  
“Not the word I’d have picked.”  
  
“Hey Chuck,” Cait called over the general hubbub of the bar, lifting a hand to flag down the Mr.-Handy-Gone-Barkeep. “Gimme yer strongest, yeah?”  
  
“Thought you were on the wagon,” Mac sniffed.  
  
“I stopped shootin’ chems, I didn’t drop dead.”  
  
“Right. My mistake.”  
  
With a cockney grumble of complaint, Whitechapel set down a dark glass bottle that, when opened, emitted a scent so sharp it might have melted the hairs in the noses of anyone too close. Cait inhaled with a satisfied air, and promptly tossed back an overlarge gulp. Mac couldn’t help but laugh, and she grinned down at him in his hunched position, licking her lips in an outlandishly lewd fashion.  
  
“You gonna sit there all shy like a school girl all night or you gonna show me the caps you won?”  
  
Mac’s grin was easy and a little overconfident, and he leaned back in his seat to arch a challenging brow in her direction. “What makes you so sure I bet on you?”  
  
Her hand shot forward with honed reflexes, snatching Mac by his collar and yanking him none too gently closer, the tips of their noses touching as a result. “’Cause you know I’d give ya a good kickin’ if you did anything else.” She met his matching grin with a rough sort of kiss, and he laughed against her.  
  
“Get a room or start chargin’ for the show,” Whitechapel barked, and Cait turned her signature, devil-take-me smile on him.  
  
“Y’jealous, Chucky? Do bots even have naughty bits?”  
  
MacCready couldn’t hold in the uproar of laughter at this, and he sat back more comfortably on his stool, fishing in his pockets to retrieve a sizeable tin heavy with the metal-on-metal clink of bottlecaps. “Come on, Charlie, lighten up a little. Cait just made it to the finals!”  
  
“No more’n a fat lip, either,” she boasted, tonguing the split at the center of her lower lip.  
  
“Congratulations,” Charlie answered, tone lacking any trace of enthusiasm.  
  
“Ah, you won’t say no to cold hard caps, will you?” MacCready shook the tin in his hand indicatively.  
  
Eye stalks swiveled and mechanical pupils constricted in displeasure. “I have been instructed not to charge tonight’s champion. Mayor’s orders.”  
  
“Good ol’ Hancock,” Cait chimed, taking another swig. “We should find a way to thank him.” This was directed to Mac, and she did nothing to hide the suggestive melody in her tone.  
  
“I would need to be a _lot_ drunker for that to even enter the realm of possibility.”  
  
“Better start catchin’ up then, yeah?”  
  
They laughed.  
  
  
  
Irma was cooing on the edge of her lounge before the group had taken more than two steps into the building. “ _Nicky_ ,” she practically purred, “it’s been _too_ long.”  
  
“Agency keeps me busy,” he answered with an easy smile, giving the woman a debonair little dip of his hat. “But I’m always glad to be back.”  
  
“One day you’re gonna have to make good on all your flirting, detective.” Her smile was one of the spider waiting patiently at the center of the web. Deacon did not miss the sudden storm cloud on Nora’s face, and he goosed her ribs playfully. She blew him a quiet raspberry. Piper rolled her eyes.  
  
“The magic’s in the suspense, Irma.” Deacon was grinning outright now. Nora very pointedly did not make eye contact. “The doc in?”  
  
“Downstairs,” Irma answered, eyeing the group as the moved like a herd in the direction of the stairs. “Don’t know if we can accommodate all of you today, though.”  
  
“No worries there,” Deacon answered, bracing his hands on Nora’s shoulders from behind and issuing a friendly squeeze. “I gotta bug out for a bit.”  
  
“What?” Nora spun around, suddenly panicky. “Why?”  
  
There was an earnest kind of regret in Deacon’s normally unreadable expression, and he planted his palms on her biceps as if to steady her. “Gonna head home. Anyone sees us here before Dez hears from us, we’ll both be in hot water. I’ll take your report, too. I’ll be back.”  
  
She held him in place with her gaze for a few silent moments, and though their conversation had become wordless, the pain in it was practically a physical force in the room. At last Nora seemed to relent, and Deacon he looked like he was in gunshot-level pain as he tore himself away from her. Piper had already descended a few steps, and Nick waited patiently at the top of the small stairwell, occupying himself with shucking his coat and folding it over his arm. Nora merely stared down at the descending steps, chewing the inside of her cheek.  
  
Deacon bent low enough to breathe into her ear, and no one heard the sentiment he shared. Nick did catch the discreet item he’d clandestinely palmed into the back pocket of her jeans, and though he couldn’t tell precisely what it was, it seemed to steady Nora a little, and he supposed that was what mattered most.  
  
When the agent made his departure proper, Nora turned back to the stairway, hands clenching and unclenching at her sides a few times.  
  
“Blue?” Piper’s tone wasn’t quite as pushy as it usually was, and she canted her head with a look of concern. “You comin’?”  
  
“Mhm.” She didn’t move.  
  
Gingerly, Nick reached out to rest a hand at the small of her back, and the way she jumped in response felt like a cut. She met him with a somewhat flustered, apologetic smile, gathered herself with a deep breath, and took the stairs two at a time at a fair clip. It took a few seconds before Piper and Nick had registered this, and they scrambled for a moment to catch up.  
  
The din of six feet hitting the lower landing together caused Amari to glance up from her terminal, and though her face registered recognition of them all, her gaze was fast and sharp upon the woman sandwiched between reporter and sleuth.  
  
“Nora.” Her tone was so gentle it took Nick by surprise. He’d never seen Amari handle anyone with kid gloves. “I could have met you upstairs.”  
  
Nora flapped her hands a little desperately, shaking her head. “It’s fine, I’m fine. We’re here – we need your help. If you can help us.”  
  
“I can certainly try.” She stood from the chair she very obviously used to wheel about the room in lieu of standing up every five seconds, and ushered them all – though primarily Nora – to the little couch against the wall. “What are we dealing with?”  
  
The explanation took a lot of repetition and rephrasing, and Nora barely let anyone but Amari get a word in edgewise. She spoke like she was racing to the end of every sentence, and it brought to Nick’s mind the image of her smoking.  
  
At last, Amari sat back in her chair, looking a little weighed down and more than a little taken aback by the flood of information. Her eyes shifted from face to face, for once at a lack of words.  
  
“You kinda hooked me up before, doc.” Nick was speaking finally, now that Nora seemed to have lapsed into hesitant silence. “We were wondering if you couldn’t do something similar.”  
  
“We could certainly try,” Amari repeated, sitting up a little straighter as her mind cranked slowly into gear again. “It would be fundamentally similar, I think. You would have to play both host and visitor, though, and that could create severe instability. I’m not sure we could hold anything down long enough to glean any decipherable information.” She was scowling in thought, tapping one elbow with the fingertips of her opposite hand.  
  
“Could we use a third party?” Nora was stiff in her seat, but her eyes belied fire. “Like before. Someone to provide a foundation so Nick wouldn’t have to keep switching back and forth.”  
  
“I…suppose.” Concern was leaking into her expression, and she was eyeing Nora like one might watch someone toeing the edge of a steep cliff. “They likely wouldn’t be able to be an inactive participant, however. Nick was the filter through which one party accessed another previously. There were three distinct parts to the equation. Most notably, two parts of that equation were human. Here, Nick is both subject and object, and he is the only conduit through which we can access his particular neural structure. We would have to use a human mind, given that we don’t have another Nick. That could prove…precarious.”  
  
“Why?” Nora demanded, and both Piper and Nick looked to her with surprise. She wasn’t usually so terse.  
  
“They would be present, but not in control. Ostensibly, direction and content would be split between Nick and this rogue code. The third party, as you say, would merely be providing a kind of stable baseline, allowing Nick to untangle himself from another in-house entity without having to strain himself by maintaining the memory environs.”  
  
“God, don’t you science types _ever_ talk to people under the assumption we’re not all versed in seven different dialects of jargon?” Piper finally found room to express her frustration at being left so far behind – again – and did her best to fit it all into one sentence in case she didn’t get another opening.  
  
Amari sighed. “Nick would be using a great deal of mental energy attempting to separate his own personality from another that, for all intents and purposes, has been hiding by intertwining itself with Nick’s consciousness. They have formed a single person out of two separate individuals. Granted, this subcode is likely not as developed as Nick, and so would lack a great deal of depth given that it’s confined to a mere handful of lines of code. But it would be – like trying to extract a splinter from your whole body.”  
  
Piper grimaced, regretting just a tad that she’d even asked for a more understandable explanation.  
  
“This would be a strain on any mind, but once the two entities were separated – and even in the process of doing so – Nick would also need to be fabricating an environment in which this can take place. Think of it as – Nick would have to be the interrogator, the interrogated, and the room in which they conducted the interrogation. In this kind of scramble, it would be difficult to maintain, and it would be even more difficult to ensure Nick’s cohesive return to consciousness.”  
  
“So he’d like – fry his brain?”  
  
“Essentially. It would be a high probability. Introducing someone else to allow their mind to take on the burden of supporting the environment would lessen the risk to Nick, but I fear even the strongest human mind would find it…disconcerting.”  
  
“Why is that a problem?” Nora’s tone was clipped, her fingers curling into fists periodically atop her knees.  
  
“Nora,” Amari began, again with that gentleness that seemed so foreign to Nick. “Imagine being forced to produce, but having no control over the product. Imagine not being able to determine when or where you exist, or if you exist at all. We would be using the brain as a kind of battery, and you can’t separate the consciousness from the brain. But a battery doesn’t control what it powers, it merely fuels it. Being so disconnected from your own living experience – I fear it could be dangerous even for the well prepared.”  
  
“So let’s say someone was willing to take the risk,” Nora began, in a tone that indicated this oncoming hypothetical was very much _not_ hypothetical.  
  
“Now, wait—” But Nick fell quiet at the brace of her palm against his knee. He felt strangely helpless.  
  
“Could it be anyone? What would they need to be able to do it?”  
  
Amari sighed again, this time with clear exasperation. “ _If_ someone were foolish enough to try, they would ideally be close to the subject. Shared experience could help strengthen the connection, and it would not hurt to have a safety net of trust. Giving over control of your being is not an action I can imagine taking lightly.”  
  
Nora barely took a second to consider. “I’ll do it.”  
  
There was an immediate uproar. Amari started what would surely be a long-winded lecture, Piper was immediately questioning Nora’s sanity, Nora was trying to fend them both off at once, and Nick…  
  
Nick was burning.  
  
“Can I talk to you?” It sounded like a question, but he had Nora by the elbow in an instant and was marching her out of the basement office with an atmosphere of steaming incredulity. She was still blinking in surprise by the time he’d rounded the corner into the empty restroom, releasing her arm and staring down at her with a deeply dissatisfied expression.  
  
“What’s this all about, Nora? What’s gotten into you?” His hands sat on his belt, coat discarded atop a nearby sink. “You’ve never gone into something this half-cocked before.”  
  
Her face was suddenly steel, and he wanted to scream. She’d deadened her expression to him, made herself decidedly unreadable. And she’d done it _on purpose_. To _him_.   
  
“Do you not want to do it anymore?” Nora’s voice was flat, but iron hard.  
  
“I didn’t—I just don’t want to jump into something that might hurt you – especially if there’s a chance it won’t work. At least not without thinking about it, first.”  
  
“I have thought about it.”  
  
“ _Bull_.”  
  
Their eyes locked, and they both seethed. Nora’s hands were fists at her sides. Nick rubbed his forehead with a metal send of fingers, pushing his hat slightly back on his head in the process.  
  
“I’m not here to make you do anything you don’t want to, Nick.”  
  
“I didn’t—”  
  
“But this is _not_ not happening because of me. I’ve made my choice. You have to make yours.”  
  
“That’s unfair and you know it. You’re not making a choice in some kind of vacuum. This is my brain we might be scrambling here, too.”  
  
“If you don’t want to—”  
  
Nick issued a wordless cry of frustration, spinning on his heel to pace a few steps away from her, if only to expend this suddenly pent-up, heated energy. “Damn it, Nora, you know that’s not what I’m saying. But you can’t just – expect me not to care about what happens to you. You can’t make me choose to hurt you. You fly in after a damn year and you’re barely around three days before you’re betting your well-being on a coin toss and asking me to just – support it. To _enable_ it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had some kinda death wish.”  
  
Nora simply glared straight ahead, more or less at the crooked knot of his tie. “If you don’t want to go through with it—”  
  
“Don’t—”  
  
“ _I’m not going to hold it against you_. You don’t have to feel guilty. I’m not going to resent your choice. I don’t want to make you compromise your beliefs. But you _don’t_ get to tell me how to make my choices. You owe me that respect, too. You can’t ask me to go against what I think is right, either.”  
  
He heaved a sigh, feeling the fight flood out of him with it. In a sort of desperate last attempt, he lifted his hands to cradle her cheeks between them, trying to catch her eye again. “Just – tell me what’s going on. Can you trust me that much?”  
  
“ _Please_.” Nora’s voice cracked at last, and Nick’s heart split. “Just let me do this for you, Nick, okay? Just let me do this one thing. This _one_ – fucking – one thing.”  
  
He felt like a black hole in a fedora. He wanted to tell her she didn’t have to prove anything to him, that he’d help her whatever way he could if she’d just let him in. But all he could say was “okay,” and gather her to his chest, wrapping an arm around her and bracing the back of her head with his other hand. “Okay.” He ran his fingers gently through her hair while she trembled for a little while, choking back constrained sobs and knotting her hands in the back of his shirt.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
  
They took a little while to steady Nora, to allow Dr. Amari to run a battery of diagnostics on the pair of them, for Piper to wear out her “we’re-not-really-doing-this” routine, and for Nick to let that lead weight settle in his stomach. Or – whatever his synth equivalent was.  
  
The pair were settled into familiar, comfy pods, and Amari used her chair to drift between them, monitoring vitals, testing dials, being generally very cryptic and doctory. She stopped at Nora’s side, finally, and with an almost motherly concern, brushed a palm over the woman’s forehead. “It will be strange.” Nora nearly laughed at this – what a bedside manner. This was going to be the most dour pep talk. “You will be aware, but you will not be in the pilot seat, so to speak. Things will feel like your choices – or perhaps like someone is making choices through you. Nick is the predominant mind in this session, and so you will be experiencing his point of view. You’ve done that before, but you had more ability to navigate. I can’t assemble memories or a path for you this time. Nick will have to supply you with the information and you will have to construct it.”  
  
“Sounds like a lot for one person,” Nick said, trying to keep the resentment out of his voice and not entirely succeeding. Nora simply closed her eyes against it.  
  
“It is,” Amari answered, sliding her chair to Nick’s pod and glancing over the digital display. “But you are not taking on a less difficult task. You will have to _fight_ to control your path. It is likely that, if this code, this – stranger is latching on like some kind of parasite, it does not want to be found. It will resist, and it will try to make you do the resisting.”  
  
“Sounds like a fun time all around.” Piper’s voice drifted in from the corner of the room, and she made absolutely no effort to hide the reservation in her tone.  
  
Amari withdrew from the sight of either subject, though they could both hear her fingers dancing across a keyboard. “It will help to start on neutral ground. Something that is familiar to both of you would be ideal, but primarily it must be a calm location. One that you do not associate with stress or strain.”  
  
“Find my happy place,” Nick summarized sardonically, “you got it, doc.”  
  
The doctor sighed, but maintained an even tone. “I’ll be easing you into it. Just try to relax.”  
  


_Relax._  
  
At first, nothing. Then something like a whole-body hiccup. Then endless, endless black.  
  
There’s sand underfoot and salt in the air, and Nora is kissing a pretty young blonde girl who tastes like peaches. She’s nursing a bullet wound to the shoulder and hauling down an endless stretch of asphalt after a man she can’t see. She’s cradling Jenny’s head and watching the young woman wake up and wondering how it could be this perfect, perfect, perfect. It’s raining and Jenny’s coffin is being lowered while classical music claws at her ears. It’s raining and she’s welcoming the Commonwealth sky for the first time in her life, and she’s looking at a woman out of time and nearly out of hope. It’s raining and Kellogg is dead at their feet and she isn’t better, she isn’t happy, how can she make this better – need to find her son, her son, her son.  
  
The beach. Salt in the air. Chicago trains. Boston boats. She’s smoking someone else’s cigarette and she feels human, really human, for the first time. She’s kissing Nora in the shadow of her rooftop nook and trying to put so many unsaid, complicated things into it.  
  
She’s on the beach in that old dress. Her toes are in the sand. She can breathe. She turns around and calls to Nick, who is smiling vaguely at her, her arms outstretched.  
  
Her palms are two cities of pain and she can feel the modulated Psycho pooling in her thigh and forcing her awake. She is bathing in pain. The smell of blood and burnt skin, and they’re both hers. Somewhere, Deacon is screaming. Zimmer’s voice is in her ear, laden with simple pleasure.  
  
_I want you to know,_ _Nora. I want you to know._  
  
She can’t move her arms. The right side of her face is tight and sticky. Somewhere, Deacon is screaming. Somewhere, she is screaming. Somewhere, Nick is screaming.  
  
  
  
Nick lurched into a different kind of consciousness and nearly smacked his head against the glass of the pod. Piper was hurriedly trying to help pry him free, babbling in a panicked kind of way. He felt dizzy, off-center, but he had to stand. Had to find Nora.  
  
She was curled over the edge of her pod, face in her hands and knuckles nearly touching her knees. Amari was crouched in front of her, bracing her forearms with her hands and trying to elicit a coherent response. Nora’s sobs were loud and shrill and strange, like an animal caught on barbed wire.   
  
“You can’t let this happen, Nora. You can’t do this to yourself.” Nick was unsteadily on his feet and trying to bring the world back into one cohesive picture. “You’ve never gotten this far, you know that. In three months of sessions you never got this far. You can’t let yourself go backwards.”  
  
Above the general panic and din, something registered at the back of Nick’s mind and sent a white hot signal, slow and molten, to branch out into his body. “Wait…”  
  
“Listen to me, Nora. You missed this last week, it can be very jarring to go back in again so suddenly. This was a lot to take on. You are _not there_ , do you understand? You are here in my office.”  
  
“ _Wait_ …”  
  
Nora’s voice had come to a point in a stream of “no no no no no,” as her hands shifted to cover her ears, body rocking just slightly. Amari was still talking, low and steady, but nothing was reaching her.  
  
“Wait!”  
  
Nick’s voice nearly surprised himself. The room went silent. Nora’s head shot up, big wet eyes staring at him. He felt useless, listless, _angry_.  
  
“What do you mean – three months of sessions?”  
  
“She’s been coming in for the past three months. She pushes herself too hard. I told her I didn’t think she was in a state to leave, but she insisted.”  
  
“Three months.” Nick’s tone was hollow. A volcano was rumbling. The earth was ready to split.  
  
“That’s not – she said she only just…” Piper trailed off, eyes landing on Nora in some strange expression of betrayal.  
  
“She’s been here,” Nick echoed, “for _three months_.” A dam was cracking. He rounded on Nora with a kind of acid on his tongue that was entirely unfamiliar. “ _You_ ’ve been back. For three months.”  
  
“I didn’t – I didn’t want –” But Nora didn’t really have an end to her sentence. She watched him as an ant under an inescapable magnifying class.  
  
“Please, Nora.” The harsh quiet of his tone cut to her bone, faster and more effectively than any shouting could have. “Please tell me what you didn’t want. You didn’t want to tell the people who cared about you – who _mourned_ you – that you were back? You didn’t want to see your son, who stayed up every _damn_ night trying to reach you on that stupid radio? You didn’t want to thank the people who took him in as their own? You didn’t want to bother with me – with us – until you needed a better screwdriver for this – insane pet project of yours?”  
  
“Nick,” Piper was uncharacteristically quiet, and he ignored her.  
  
“Tell me, Nora, because I don’t understand. You don’t even take three days to pretend to be happy that you’re back home before you rip us all out of our lives to serve your own ends. Explain that to me.”  
  
“Nick, this is not the time.” Amari’s voice was stern, but it fell on deaf ears. All Nick could hear were the hot, jealous, angry things he’d wanted to say and had thought better of. Everything he’d stuffed down into silence for her sake. It was all bubbling to the surface and it was all coming out wrong, but some animal part of him wanted to hurt. Wanted to see his hurt on her face. Wanted her to know his pain.  
  
“You give us just enough time to settle and then uproot us in a matter of hours. And then – and then you bring us here, on some hunch, on some – ghost story. To do what? Who benefits from this?”  
  
“I’mgonnabesick.” It came out in a rush, and Nora was on her feet, racing on jelly legs up the stairs. Nick tore after her without hesitation, Piper and Amari on his heels with their voices raised in futile attempts at drawing a truce.  
  
She was out of the red double doors with a bang, and had made it across the street before colliding headlong into a tipsy couple winding their way across the square in front of the old state house.  
  
“Oi!” A woman shouted.  
  
“Whoop – try to watch where you’re going, doll, you—”  
  
“No _fuckin_ ’ way.”  
  
“What – what – oh my god.”  
  
“Are y’kidding me right now?”  
  
“Nora?”  
  
Each remark escalated in volume until Cait and MacCready were adding their voices to the general din of the party shooting out of the memory den.  
  
Nora threw up. Cait leapt back in disgust. “Y’splashed me, you bloody – you let me go thinkin’ you’re dead and now you just show up here on some kinda bender?”  
  
“Cait, lay off, that’s not—”  
  
“What the fuck are _you_ doin’ here, Piper? You know about this?”  
  
“What the ff- Nora, what the hell!”  
  
“Not now, Mac.”  
  
“You back off, Valentine. You let her get like this?”  
  
“This isn’t the damn time—”  
  
_“HEY_!”  
  
In true Goodneighbor fashion, a crowd had drawn around the cacophony of an argument, but there came an almost unnatural hush over all of them, even those in the center of it all, at the sound of that voice.  
  
The state house door was standing open, and a red coat wore a mottled, angry face atop the stoop. John Hancock wasn’t a tall man, but he was somehow talented at giving the impression of tallness. Even Deacon, who had a few inches on the ghoul, was only noticed once he stepped sideways out of the mayoral shadow.  
  
“Next person who talks without me tellin’ ‘em gets a Goodneighbor welcome.” He twirled his combat knife idly in one hand, as if unconscious of the item’s presence or his actions. But not a single eye missed its glint as it spun a few more times before finding its sheath at the man’s hip.  
  
“Now,” he began again, entirely peaceful, “I see a lotta old familiar faces lookin’ real unfriendly. So we’re all gonna take a step back and keep our hands to ourselves, you feel me?”  
  
The group shuffled apart slightly, but Deacon seemed to bristle. “Wait. Wait,” he demanded, catching Hancock’s concerned attention. “Where’s Bullseye?”  
  
There was a brief moment filled with a silence that somehow singularly belonged to a group sense of bewilderment. The woman was nowhere to immediately be seen.  
  
“You – don’t fucking—” Deacon’s normally cool demeanor was suddenly the embodiment of raised hackles, and he threw his arms wide in an incredibly furtive _What-The-Actual-Fuck_ gesture. “You fucking _lost_ her?” Deacon gave an unrestrained, brief kind of roar. Hancock reached out to cup a hand over his nearest shoulder. They exchanged some silent sentiment, and then Deacon shot off like a bullet, disappearing into the darkness of Goodneighbor’s alleys with very loud, colorful complaints.  
  
Those black, shark eyes were turned back on the crowd, and the sheer passivity of Hancock’s demeanor was enough to rattle the nerves of his town. “Okay,” he concluded at last, hooking a thumb into his star-spangled belt, “here’s what’s gonna go down. My old pals are gonna join me for a chat, and everyone else is gonna go about their business.” He paused, casting a hard look around the gathering. “Dig?”  
  
As one man, the citizens split off in different directions, leaving the quartet standing awkward and impotent in the middle of the square.  
  
“Come on in,” Hancock beckoned, and the shuffled after him with a palpable atmosphere of disgruntlement.  
  
Amari lingered uselessly outside for a few minutes before once again retreating into the Memory Den.  
  
Once inside, behind the closed door, the mayor’s demeanor changed. He’d gone from a lackadaisy lean to a stance that came to a point. Everything about him was sharp, all at once. “You two,” he barked, gesturing to Cait and MacCready, “you cool your heels down here, and stay put. You –” he turned on Piper and Nick “—come with me.”  
  
As he turned to tromp up the staircase in the center of the room, Cait put up her typical fight against any and all authority. “Y’can’t just keep us here, Hancock!”  
  
“Consider it protective custody.”  
  
“From what?” Mac demanded.  
  
Hancock turned so fast he could have cut the air. “ _Me_ , if I hear either of ya set so much as a foot outside before my say-so.” Taking this as their go-ahead, two well-dressed machine guns with faces closed rank in front of the door, effectively barring it from access.  
  
When the trio crested the top of the stairs, Hancock gestured expansively to the couches ahead of them. “Siddown.” It wasn’t a request or an offer. It was a fact. He continued his lazy gate toward his desk, fishing out a tin of Mentats from a drawer. Nick and Piper settled onto the same couch, though a fair distance apart. Piper’s arms were tightly crossed, Nick’s ankle hooked impatiently over the opposite knee. Hancock settled opposite them at last, thumbing the tin open like a clam.  
  
He took his time planting two tablets on his tongue, and pocketed the tin afterward. His head leaned back, his eyes closed, and he seemed either to be communing with the beyond or gathering his thoughts. Knowing the mayor, there was a good chance it was a bit of both.  
  
“Are you just gonna sit there st—”  
  
Nick lifted a hand to wave Piper into silence, and was met with an indignant harrumph in response. “Whaddya _want_ , Hancock?”  
  
“I _want_ you two to listen. Just listen. I got a story for ya, and it ain’t pretty. Deac, he’d never tell ya, ‘cause he’s basically a good guy. Me? I’m a grade-A bastard. And I need you to understand what absolute putzes yer makin’ of yerselves.”


	7. No Body, No Blood, No Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains brief, somewhat graphic descriptions of violence/torture.

_Don’t be afraid to try again.  
Everyone goes south  
every now and then._

 

 

“When your girl and her slippery friend came to me, I didn’t even recognize ‘em. They weren’t even people anymore.”

 

  
  
  
First of all – _fuck_ heights. He knew – knew like he knew every line of every new face he’d ever owned – that Bullseye felt safest when she could loom above the danger, at a distance. Deacon liked that about her, really. He was always more of a watching-from-the-sidelines kind of guy, and he greatly admired how deadly she’d become within those confines. Sure, he had enough training and experience to handle a gun – there was no living anywhere in the Commonwealth without that particular skillset – but that didn’t mean he had to like it. At first, he’d been hesitant about her eagerness to get her hands on a weapon. He worried, perhaps, that like so many people into whom the Commonwealth had dug its claws, she would get trigger-happy as a means of survival.  
  
But she didn’t just want to shoot. She wanted accuracy – she wanted _finesse_. And he _loved_ that about her.  
  
She’d already been a good shot with a pistol, had mentioned something about occasionally going to the range with her husband – she didn’t like to speak too much about it, and Deacon was happy to let sleeping dogs lie. That she’d told him anything at all he considered a kind of gift, and he knew firsthand how hard it could be to give. He held it close, like a secret. The first real secret he actually shared with someone else in – well. In far too long. He’d paid her back the only way he knew how: With a truth. She had kept it, too, and he supposed that was really the beginning of their closeness.  
  
It wasn’t what had cemented it, however. It wasn’t the fire that welded them together into the inseparable unit they had become. He grimaced at the thought. He also grimaced at the fact that he was clinging to the edge of a wall way too high above the street and trying to shove a leg through a long-broken and unused window on the demolished top floor of the Rexford. Mostly, he tried not to think about it.  
  
Deacon eventually fell gracelessly through the window frame onto the small, interior platform that had once been a part of an entire extra floor, though now most of it was demolished and unused. He’d been here a number of times before, despite its inherent position and difficulty of access. Despite the fact that those were precisely the things Nora _liked_ about it.  
  
When they’d gotten back – when they’d stumbled into Goodneighbor more dead than alive, this had become a favorite spot of hers. He’d spent many a day up here with her, her rifle cradled in her arms and his back against hers, sharing cigarettes and silence and the somehow sweet and acrid taste of free air.

  
  
“They were beat up. I don’t just mean black and blue, I mean things-hanging-on-with-spit-and-skin kinda beat up. Hell, fast as we got them to the doc, we still thought Nora was gonna lose that eye. She was practically holding the damn thing in her hand the whole way here.”  
  
Piper’s face went white and then green, and she turned her face away to cup a hand tightly over her mouth. She knew how bad things could get out there, knew that whatever Nora and Deacon had endured had been _really_ bad, but – well, you just didn’t really think about your friends in that kind of condition. Deacon was barely more than a shadow at the best of times, and Nora? She was…indestructible.  
  
Hancock took a moment to light a cigarette, offering one to Nick – who took it, but hardly smoked it. He spent most of his time glaring at the red heat on its end.  
  
“You know they were tortured?”  
  
Piper’s expression grew all the more reluctant. “We – well I think we guessed, I mean. They didn’t say, but – I mean, they were down there for months.”  
  
“Eight months, three weeks,” Hancock confirmed, “and two and a half days. Thereabouts, anyway. And every single second of it, they were put in pain. _Real_ pain.”  
  
“Her hands,” Nick grumbled, and Piper looked at him with raised brows. “They – her hands. The scars.”  
  
But Hancock didn’t need the elaboration that Piper did. The ghoul simply nodded, blowing out a cool, collected cloud of smoke. “Zimmer did that one personally.” His tone was flat, but in a way that was recognizable. His sheer outrage at the entirety of an unspeakable situation was so white-hot, so raw, it couldn’t be contained in a tone of voice. The way he spoke – that was the Hancock who pulled the trigger without saying a word. Who didn’t stay to bury the body. Who wrapped his hands around the throat with an impassive expression because sometimes, death was the _only_ answer.  
  
“Had her in this chair, see. Said they never let her out of it. Not for anything. Not to wash, not to sleep, not to take a piss.”  
  
Piper coughed, disgusted.  
  
“Yeah. All kinds a straps to keep her there. And then Zimmer introduced himself with a nailgun.”  
  
“ _What_?” Piper couldn’t even assemble a readable expression. Nick’s whole body had stiffened to that inhuman stillness he was capable of, and even his internal moving parts had seemed to go quiet.  
  
“One in each hand. Said he wanted to keep her still. Nailed her to the fuckin’ chair.”  
  
“She told you all this?” He finally asked.  
  
“No,” was Hancock’s strangely firm answer, “she _lived_ it. Every day she was here. She’d wake up screamin’, all hours, talking about ice cream scoops taken outta her arms, missin’ fingernails, somethin’ about holes in her knees one time.”  
  
Piper was holding her hands nearly over her ears. “Jesus, Hancock, _stop_.”  
  
“I’m not tellin’ ya this to make ya sick. Ain’t even tellin’ ya to make ya feel guilty. I’m tellin’ ya because if ya wanna understand Nora – the Nora that’s here now, the Nora that came back – you gotta _understand_.” As if this reminded him of something, Hancock stood again, gripping his cigarette in his mouth and opening a locked drawer on his desk. “We got her cleaned up as best we could, first day. Thought about cleanin’ her clothes but there was nothin’ in the world could get those stains out. So, fished through her pockets, lookin’ for anythin’ that’d tell us what happened. Found these.”  
  
He’d placed a small, rattling tin of Mentats in Piper’s hand, and for some reason, the little case seemed to become the center of Nick’s world. He stared.  
  
“Drugs?” Piper had asked, confused, but Hancock shook his head as he plopped back onto his sofa again.  
  
“Open it.”  
  
She did so, and let out a wordless cry, dropping the tin entirely. Nick was nothing if not efficient, though, and his hand shot out to catch it before it could hit the floor. He felt some fuse, some electric connection simply shut down.  
  
There, in the case, in various states of completeness – some still including large chunks of roots – was a collection of yellowed, bloodied teeth.

  
  
  
After gathering himself to his feet, Deacon was edging along the narrow strip of remaining floor attached at the wall, making his slow but steady way to the triangular corner, just big enough for two people and a handful of weapons, tucked up between two corner windows and the spare ammo box they’d installed there early on. He could make her out in the darkness, just barely, but he still greeted her in their old, familiar way.  
  
“Marco?”  
  
“Polo,” she replied, strangely calm and soft. He sighed. He shouldn’t have left. He _knew_ he shouldn’t have left, but he hadn’t wanted her there when Dez went on her rampage – which she absolutely did. She didn’t need all the crowding and questioning right now. Though, he thought bitterly, it looked like she’d gotten it anyway.  
  
“Hey, partner,” he greeted quietly, slipping down behind her with his legs sprawled to either side of hers, reaching forward to wrap his arms gently around her middle and tuck his chin into the crook of her shoulder. She didn’t answer, so they sat in silence until some of the tension eased out of her crouched figure, and she began to lean back into his chest.  
  
If it had been anyone else, Deacon would have kept his distance. Probably wouldn’t have come up here in the first place, let alone invade someone’s personal space so naturally. But he knew Nora, knew what touch meant to her – knew, far too intimately, the comfort of an unseen hand gripping his in the darkness, sticky with someone’s blood and twisted with broken bones and dislocated knuckles.  
  
“It wasn’t even the memories, you know?” He voice was bitter, and he tightened his grip around her briefly. “I thought – it wasn’t good, I mean. It was too…” But she didn’t have to pick a careful word. He understood. “But in the end, it was the basement.”  
  
Deacon stiffened a little. He _shouldn’t_ have left, damn it.  
  
“Just – the way it made his voice sound, when he was yelling.”  
  
“He yelled at you?” Deacon sounded uncharacteristically aggressive at this idea, so she let out a hollow, humorless laugh and settled an arm on top of his for reassurance.  
  
“I guess not. Not really. He was angry, but – just – the basement, you know? Took me right there.”  
  
“Where’d you go?” Again his tone was gentle, and he nosed affectionately into the side of her neck.  
  
“Day with the teeth.”  
  
He perceptibly flinched, and her arm was gripping him tighter, his hold on her squeezing unconsciously. That had been a _particularly_ bad one.  
  
“I was – I was there and I was holding your teeth in my hands and I could – _hear_ him, feel his – his breath, and he was telling me – that – I could stop it…” Her voice cracked, her body shook. And he held her close, and let her cry, and shifted his arm enough to take gentle hold of her hand.  
  
“You couldn’t have,” he answered her quietly at last, when she seemed to regain some amount of calm.  
  
“I tried.”  
  
“I know.” He gave her another squeeze. He remembered, all too well, the feel and surprisingly light weight of her teeth in his palm, the laugh in Zimmer’s voice.

  
  
“Who – who—” Piper was trying to stammer out a question that stuck like barbed wire in her throat.  
  
“Mix of both, I think. Doc said they were both missing some.”  
  
“ _God_. How – how was Deacon, I mean…” He never seemed flustered. Never seemed like he cared enough about anything to bother feeling bothered. Except, she supposed, maybe Nora.  
  
“Ya know, I still don’t really know. Guy didn’t talk for a whole week and a half.”  
  
“ _Deacon_?” Both detective and reporter spoke in unison under the united force of absolute disbelief.  
  
“Not a word. Wouldn’t let the Doc give him anything when she was puttin’ him back together, though. Said he just dealt with it until he passed out.”  
  
Nick set the vile tin on the low table in front of him, finally taking a desperate kind of drag from his cigarette, which had nearly burned out without his help.  
  
“After that, he just spent all his time with her. And she spent all her time in that bed.” He gestured pointedly behind them, to the little doorway that marked his bedroom. When Piper fixed him with an expression approaching distaste, he scoffed. “Not like that. I was on the couch. She didn’t get up for anything. Not food, not me, not anything. And Deac wouldn’t leave her side. It was like that for a week, maybe two, ‘til he came out while she was sleepin’ one night and I almost shit my pants, guy’s so fuckin’ quiet. Started talkin’ to me about getting’ Doc Amari involved, see if she couldn’t do anything about the nightmares.”  
  
“Their sessions,” Nick concluded, and Hancock fixed him with a very pointed stare.  
  
“Why’d she stop? Why’d they leave?”  
  
Hancock shrugged, but kept his eyes on Nick. “Started gettin’ antsy. She was comin’ down from the chems and couldn’t really sit still. Got real set on some plan to find out where this Zimmer guy and his team went.”  
  
“Chems?” Piper’s voice was suddenly stiff with outrage. “What chems?”  
  
“Whatever she could get her hands on, usually.”  
  
“You _let_ her?” The ice in Nick’s tone was enough to lower the temperature of the room.  
  
“What, I’m gonna tell a grown-ass woman how to treat her body? I kept an eye on her,” he added sternly, as if this was much of a reassurance, “didn’t let her take anything if I didn’t know where it came from. Made most of it myself, just to be sure.”  
  
“What did she take?” Nick’s stare matched the mayor’s. For a few moments, there was a strange, silent standoff between synth and ghoul. At last, Hancock seemed to relent with another little shrug.  
  
“Med-X was her ride of choice for a while. Made it so there was nothin’ to feel. Made Deac pretty sad, I think. Couldn’t give her too much anyway, she’s too small for big doses, so she started after other things. Never Mentats – didn’t want anything she was fightin’ off to get thrown into sharp relief, if ya get me. Day Tripper for a while, got her out on her feet more often. Deac said she always went up to her damn sniper perch, though. Daddy-O once, but…” He faltered slightly, frowning. “Took her too far away. Had to make sure it wasn’t comin’ into the city for a while. Not much business for it, anyway. Not a lotta philosophers around here.”  
  
“She never said…” Piper was a tangible mix of sad and confused, and not a little ashamed.  
  
“’Course not. Would you? Had to live that hell for nine months and then spend every night healin’ from it and relivin’ it all over again. Hell, she said that’s why she was so dead set on finding Zimmer. She wanted to put her ghosts behind her, ya know? Snuff out the last of the boogeymen. Thought it was like – her job, somehow. Like she’d left somethin’ undone.”  
  
Silence fell again, Piper fidgeting nervously with her scarf, Nick watching the last of his cigarette sizzle into silence.  
  
There wasn’t so much a sound as there was a change in the texture of the air, and Hancock spotted the heavily-armored woman leaning in his doorway. He gave an upward, questioning jerk of his head to Fahrenheit, and she responded in kind with an affirmative nod of her own. The exchange went almost unnoticed by his guests.  
  
“Piper, you wanna give me and the good detective a few minutes?”  
  
“No,” she answered flatly, arms crossing. She had had it up to _here_ with behind forced out of the loop.  
  
“You gonna do it anyway? I need someone to settle those kids downstairs before they kill my best guards and I gotta start holdin’ interviews again. I hate askin’ all those boring questions.”  
  
After giving a little wriggle of her whole body like some kind of miniature tantrum, Piper got to her feet, her scowl walking ten feel ahead of her.  
  
“And hey,” Hancock called to her, causing her to turn on her heel for a moment, “use discretion, yeah? Only reason I told you two s’cause neither of ya know how to quit when yer ahead. Let her decide who she tells and when, ya dig?” At this Piper scoffed, clearly offended that it was assumed she’d do anything _else_ , but she spun around and marched heavily down the stairs.  
  
A few more minutes passed in silence. After a while, Hancock thumbed another cigarette out of his pack before pocketing it again. “Here.” He held the cylinder out to Nick, who paused for a handful of seconds before taking it, stashing the butt of his last, barely-smoked one in the ashtray on the table. Hancock smoked his fair share, sure, but he didn’t hold a candle to Nick – or Nora, for that matter. Nicotine was never enough for him.  
  
“Now,” he began, sitting back again after sliding a lighter across the table to his visitor, “I know what yer gonna ask me, but I’m gonna let ya ask me anyway ‘cause I know ya hate it when someone beats ya to yer own thought.  
  
Nick grumbled. Sometimes he _hated_ that ghoul. Oh, he knew he was a good man at heart, knew Nora had a lot of respect for him and understood why. But the mouth on that mayor – every moment of talking to him was like sucking on a lemon. At last, however, he gave in, rolling his cigarette to the corner of his mouth. “Why tell me, specifically? Piper snoops, but she’s not here anymore.”  
  
“That’s what we call a clue, detective.” God _damn_ John Hancock. But he was grinning, a little too maliciously for Nick’s taste, and pointed at him with two fingers – almost like an imaginary gun. “’Cause you, my friend, can do somethin’ nobody else can. You got what she’s after.”  
  
He issued a frustrated sigh. Nick hated all this cryptic nonsense – not because he hated riddles or solving puzzles. Hell, he still did two-hundred-year-old crosswords whenever he found them in old, discarded newspapers. But John had a way of making a secret sound like a contract on your soul, and nobody did “lording it over you” like Goodneighbor’s mayor. “What can I do?”  
  
“I’m bettin’ ya already know, even if ya think ya don’t. I’m bettin’,” he added, and Nick felt the urge to punch that shit-eating smile square in the jaw flash through his mind, gone as quickly as it had come, “she probably already told ya. Only _you_ were too busy makin’ long-lost-eyes at her t’really listen.”  
  
_No one_ lorded anything over your head like John Hancock. How he was still alive, still _in charge_ was beyond Nick. Well – no. It was probably a contributing factor in both cases. Hancock was, objectively, a rather small man – only a few inches over five feet tall, coming up only to Nick’s shoulder when they stood side by side. But he had a kind of tallness on the inside. He was wiry and moved like a drunk spider, all knees and elbows, bone-skinny with a chest that was almost concave. But he had presence. Nick hated to admit it, but he had panache.  
  
A brief and rare – at least in the case of his favorite detective, who he took great joy in annoying – glimmer of mercy crossed Hancock’s face, and he let Nick off this particular hook. Or, he helped Nick get out of it himself, anyway. “She ask you for somethin’ when she came back? Prolly somethin’ she apologized for asking for. Prolly said she didn’t deserve it.”  
  
_Deserve_. Nick’s processors spun into action. She’d even used that word. In the same way John just had – holding it out from her like a society lady forced to pick up a dead mouse. Like she couldn’t even bring herself to associate the deserving of – anything, really, with her own person.  
  
“A normal day,” he breathed – which was especially dramatic of him, Hancock thought, considering he didn’t need to.  
  
“Bingo. Deac wanted to go to HQ first, ya know? He wanted to make everything someone else’s problem as fast as possible. Wanted to tell ‘em him and his _Bullseye_ –” he emphasized the name with a fond kind of smile, like he found the whole concept of codenames rather adorable “—were gonna take a well-earned vacation. Nora said yeah, which surprised the hell out of me, but said if they went to HQ first they’d never get time to take off. Said she wanted to go somewhere she felt at home, relaxed. Know what she told us?”  
  
He had a feeling, and it was screaming the word “jackass” at the back of his mind, but Nick merely glared at the ghoul across from him, sucking in annoyed breaths of smoke.  
  
“The Agency,” Hancock finished, grinning like a cat playing innocent with a canary in its mouth.  
  
“The Agency,” Nick echoed, and it was hollow. He really _was_ a heel, damn it. She’d even told him. She’d outright told him – and she’d never asked him for anything like that before. Nora had never been one to pull punches, and she never asked anyone to do it for her. But she’d asked him – that look in her eye, like she was begging – to give her a normal day. But--  
  
“We had one,” he objected mildly, running a thoughtful hand under his jaw. “Played caravan. Even – well.”

“Yeah, I heard yer an okay dancer.” God, that stupid grin.  
  
“How the hell—”  
  
“You even gotta ask? Deacon makes it his job to know everything there is to know about that woman. You think Nick Valentine asks her to dance while he’s in the same city and he doesn’t find out?”  
  
“I gotta do another bug sweep on the office,” he groused, and Hancock laughed. “When did you and Deacon start pallin’ around, anyway?”  
  
“Yer still not gettin’ it, Nick.”  
  
“Not getting what?”  
  
“How the hell do ya stay in business with a head that thick? Think about it, detective. All the chems at her disposal, all the people in this rotten world who’d kill to give her a little leisure time, all the friends who definitely wouldn’t have beat her up – least not with a pillow,” he added thoughtfully, “and _who_ does she ask? Who does she immediately go to?”  
  
Aw, hell.  
  
There must have been one hell of a readable expression on his face, because even Hancock – who usually had to squint at anything even resembling fine print – was catching on, loud and clear. “Yeah, buddy. Dropped the ball a bit, there.”  
  
Nick was already a day-and-a-half done with this shit. He burned in a way he knew would mean he’d be blushing if he had the ability, and that had him burning even more. “So what the hell am I supposed to do, Hancock? I tried to give her what she asked for, and we ended up here.”  
  
“All roads lead to Goodneighbor,” Hancock agreed, as if this was some sage bit of wisdom.  
  
“All of ‘em paved with good intentions, I’m sure,” was Nick’s grumpy retort. Hancock laughed, and he hated that, too – hated that he could take it just as well as he could dish it out. It would be nice to catch the man off-balance, at least once.  
  
“No argument here, brother. Still where ya ended up, like ya said.”  
  
“So – what, I’m supposed to just…watch her do this to herself? To help her do it?”  
  
Hancock held up a hand, shaking his head. “Movin’ ahead of yerself. Brahmin before the cart, and all that. Think about who Nora is when she's askin’ ya for a normal day.”  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“Does Ellie solve all yer cases for you, or what? Ya really think Nora’s normal is even – somethin’ that exists, now?”  
  
“I—” But Nick cut himself off. Much as he loathed the idea, Hancock was on the verge of making a decent point. She’d asked it of him, specifically, maybe the only other person she trusted enough who could also, if only vaguely, share a sense of that used-to-be kind of commonplace.  
  
“Catchin’ up? Took ya long enough.”  
  
“What would I even…” He threw up two hands to emphasize the – the whole – _this_ , the whole everything, and how completely exasperated and at a loss it had him.  
  
“C’mon, Nicky, ya don’t really need me to tell ya that, do ya? Didn’t y’mention somethin’ about a dame up Malden way?”  
  
“ _What_!” Nick was at the very end of a rapidly fraying rope. “Before I was a jumped up toaster, how would that—”  
  
“You _really_ gonna use that line when yer talkin’ about Nora? You were _there_ when she took out the Institute. When she freed all those synths. When she told everyone, loud and clear, that they’re people. You know what she gave up to do that, too.”  
  
Nick’s teeth clamped shut. He glared at Hancock, feeling that hopeless sense of – utter uselessness again.  
  
“I get bein’ nervous, Nick, but don’t play stupid,” and John was practically scolding him, “it’s unattractive.”  
  
Briefly, Nick examined his extensive history of life choices, wondering which had been the catalyst that sent him to this moment. Where had he gone so terribly, horribly wrong so as to put him here, receiving some choppy version of relationship advice from _John Hancock_ of all people. He laughed, a single, empty syllable. Where to even start? His whole existence was a mistake. Might as well keep up the tradition.  
  
  
  
  
“I wanted to tell him.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I – ha. I wanted to tell him a lot of things.” Her voice was so hollow. Deacon ran a thumb gingerly over her knuckles. He remembered vividly when he’d found them, when they’d been left on the floor of those dark rooms and had reached through the holes in the rusty, cutting grate in the corner to feel each other. To touch another person without pain. To feel life and be reminded of it in themselves. They’d spent hours there, after Zimmer had disappeared. They weren’t popular choices for _customers_. They’d barely talked, but they had both cried, they had both held onto the other until sleep came – sometimes too fast for one, and they had to strain their hearing to make out the breathing. To know they still weren’t alone. He’d felt her nail beds, empty of nails. She’d helped pry the industrial staples out of the edge of his palm. There was a lot that had been said between those two hands, without words or sight. She didn’t really need to explain things to him anymore.  
  
“I know,” he answered quietly, bending his legs to brace her sides with his knees and give her room to stretch. “You still can.”  
  
She let out a low, hollow laugh. “You should’ve seen the way he was looking at me. Like I – I’d hurt him. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that before. I didn’t think I had. Not like that.”  
  
“People get angry and say stupid shit.”  
  
“It wasn’t anything he said. Everything he said was true, more or less. It was his face. Like he was looking at me for the first time, and didn’t like what he saw.”  
  
His grip around Nora tightened again, and she sighed, finally leaning her full weight against him. It was like a signal – she’d come down to earth, again. She was out of the basement. And he held her like a life preserver. He wasn’t letting her go back.  
  
“Nick’s a good guy at heart. Processor. Whatever. He knows when he’s been an ass.”  
  
“He wasn’t—”  
  
“Just ‘cause he had a reason to be angry doesn’t mean he handled it the right way.”  
  
“Sometimes all the choices are bad,” she reminded him, and he rolled his eyes, smirk invading his previously stern expression.  
  
“Not all the time though. Sometimes bad choices are just the easiest.” His voice fell a little at that, and she gripped his arm a little tightly. It brought his smile fully to life. She wasn’t going to let him go back, either.  
  
She squinted into the distance, as if struggling with recollection. “Did I – did I puke on Cait and MacCready?”  
  
“Oh, _so_ much.” He was far too delighted. She groaned, but it was peppered with a laugh. “Like, big ol’ chunks. Real nasty stuff.”  
  
“You’re gross.”  
  
“It was all like, orange and green, and stuck to—”  
  
“ _Stop_ ,” Nora practically whined, shifting around so she could cover his mouth with her palm. He promptly licked it, and she stuck her tongue out in amused disgust. “You are the _grossest_ , Deacon.” But they were both smiling again, and far from the first time, were grateful for one another.  
  
There came a knock against the windowsill behind them, and both agents were on their feet in seconds. Nora’s rifle was already cupped by her shoulder, aimed under Deacon’s arm, which held up his lazy pistol – the one he carried mostly for show, rarely for use. When the woman outside held both her palms up in the dim glow of mixed neon and moonlight, they relaxed. Fahrenheit threw a leg over the sill when she was sure all guns were off her, and nodded in gruff greeting.  
  
“Got a man who wants to see you.” She announced, eyes locked on Nora.  
  
“Does he have more in common with a slice of bacon or a Mr. Handy?” Nora gave him an elbow in the side, but Deacon wasn’t particularly pleased with anyone outside this half-room at the moment.  
  
“He’s got a lot in common with someone who doesn’t appreciate a smartass,” Fahrenheit replied, coolly.  
  
“Definitely not Hancock,” they deduced, practically in unison.  
  
Nora’s breath hitched a little. “Is he down—”  
  
“He’s right outside.”  
  
“Oh. Oh – on the ledge?”  
  
“I told him to mind his manners.” Fahrenheit’s grin had a certain kind of malicious loyalty to it, and Deacon felt a strange rush of appreciation for the woman. Out of her gourd she may have been, but a friend of Hancock’s was a friend of hers – and Nora was a particularly close friend.  
  
“Well don’t just leave him out there!” But Nora’s voice was tinged with gratitude. Fahrenheit clearly caught on to it, because she gave a surprisingly amicable nod before sticking thumb and forefinger between her lips and breathing out a shrill whistle.  
  
Nick wrestled his way onto the little platform with a distinct lack of grace, grunting and groaning throughout the process, a vain hand keeping his hat pinned to his head against the breeze and tight space, severely hindering his progress. When he could safely be said to be ‘inside’ – if that was a word you could use to describe the sparse remains of a collapsed hotel floor – he straightened up, stuffing hands into his coat pockets and looking more than a little uncomfortable.  
  
“We’ll leave you to it,” Fahrenheit declared, but she didn’t move. She stared at Deacon. So did Nick.  
  
Understanding dawned. He held up his hands, as if in surrender. “Who, me? I’m already gone.” And he made quick – and for more elegant – work of climbing out after Hancock’s famous bodyguard.  
  
For a while, they stood in silence, looking at each other, the wall, the floor, and the thin interior ledge that separated his small platform from her own, wider nook. At last, he cleared his throat.  
  
“I, uh – well, Hancock told me. I don’t think everything, but – pretty close.”  
  
She grimaced a little, suddenly finding great interest in the toes of her shoes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”  
  
“I’m sorry I didn’t give you time to.”  
  
Silence fell again, and they were matching eye to eye with mixed awkward and grateful expressions. This process was always difficult and uncomfortable. It didn’t help that it was between them – something they’d never experienced before. Sure, they’d argued, but they never really fought. Not in a way that left anybody licking their wounds afterward. It was new, and neither of them took to it.  
  
“I’d – like to make it up to you, if I can.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“I’d…” He sighed, and she watched him remove his hat to hold in front of him in an entirely old-fashioned gesture of politeness. There was an explosion of endearment in her. Nick rubbed a little self-consciously at the bareness of his head once or twice before seeming to untwist whatever words had gotten stuck in his mouth. “I’d like to take you out to dinner, if that’s all right.”  
  
Nora’s wide eyes and blank expression only served to fan the flames of his stretched nerves, because suddenly he was scrambling. “I – thought you could use a break, I guess, especially after—”  
  
“When?” Her tone was surprisingly bright. It stopped him in his tracks. He fumbled.  
  
“Well – you – should probably get some rest, but – ah – if you’re free tomorrow night—”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Yes…”  
  
They stood at an impasse, neither sure how to proceed, both radiating a kind of relieved pleasure. Eventually, he faltered through an attempt at speaking again.  
  
“The, uh, Third Rail—”  
  
“ _No_.” Her voice was emphatic, but it had an echo. Deacon’s sentiment had drifted through a window, followed shortly by a small, “shit.” While the sounds of Deacon scrambling away grew quieter, Nick shoved his hat a little firmly back onto his head. Could he not get _one_ minute with this woman to which Deacon was not privy? But he sighed, nodding.  
  
“Right. Shoulda guessed. Sorry. I…” An idea of some kind began to form a visible presence in his expression, and Nora arched a brow but did not inquire. “I think – I might be able to call in a favor or two.” Her smile grew curious, but for once she seemed content to let herself be surprised. “I’ll stop by tomorrow night, then, at…?” He left the question hanging a little awkwardly between them.  
  
“Hancock’s,” was her answer, and Nick fought back a frown.  
  
“Right.”  
  
Silence stretched out again, and though the atmosphere was generally pleasant, it was still a little uncertain. After a few minutes his head shot up at the sound of her voice.  
  
“Hey, Valentine.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“What are you gonna do while I eat?”  
  
He laughed. “Count my lucky stars?”  
  
She laughed, too. Something old yet new at his center began to burn.


	8. The Sun, The Moon, The Wilderness of Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains mildly explicit content and canon-typical violence.

_You’ve done it,  
why can’t someone else?  
You should know by now,  
you’ve been there yourself._

 

 

Tonight, it’s a cocktail of Day Tripper and bourbon. This late, it’s usually a dose of Med-X and a long night of periodic nightmares, but she says she is tired of laying around, and this cheers both Hancock and Deacon enough that they don’t try to withhold anything from her. Deacon even nurses a beer of his own. He’s typically not a big drinker, and never touches the chems at his disposal – despite being encouraged by Hanock – but she’s smiling for the first time since he can remember, and that’s cause enough to celebrate for him.  
  
She’s perched on her knees beside Hancock – who is lazily leaning back in the cradle of his couch, one arm slung over the seat-back, the other hand thumbing a second round of Mentats into his mouth.  
  
“They smell like oranges,” she notes, and he laughs.  
  
“Yeah. Prolly the orange flavor.”  
  
She smiles a little wider, and it practically kills him. After she and Deacon had shown up on his doorstep with just enough parts between them to make up a full person, he didn’t know if he’d _ever_ see that smile again. It hits him like the dawn after a storm. He’s even let her snatch his hat, which she’s deposited on her own head so as to free up his scalp, which she has become engrossed with studying.  
  
He doesn’t mind. She’s always been the touchy-feely type, and touch is a rare enough commodity for him that he doesn’t object when it’s freely offered. Her fingertips are gently tracing the stretched and dried patches of skin, the small depressions between scar tissue, and the last, tiny remnant of blonde bristles at the nape of his neck.  
  
“You’re kinda perfect, John.” She says it with the softness more appropriately awarded to the vaulted ceilings of a cathedral. He smirks, but lets out a little scoff.  
  
“Now yer just makin’ fun’a me.”  
  
“I’m not.” She doesn’t have much emphasis in her voice, but it’s flat and simple enough that he can’t read a lie in it. It almost makes him a little uncomfortable. “Like art. Like you’ll always be a surprise even if someone’s seen you a hundred times.”  
  
“That’s cheesy, even for you, Sunshine.” But he’s grinning stupidly, reaching up to catch one of her hands and bring it down to his chest, where he cradles it gently. She allows him without complaint, and slips off her knees to rest against the ghoul’s side, watching his fingers tracing over her knuckles, her palm, her knotted, healing scars.  
  
“I’ve got surprises now, too,” Nora says, emptily. Hancock grimaces.  
  
“Yeah,” he agrees a little roughly, looking over the woman’s head to Deacon, who shrugs from his place on the opposite side of the couch. “Not so bad, though. Lots’a people like surprises.”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
“Love a good surprise. Spice of life.” His lazy smile screws up in mild shock when she leans forward at his answer, pressing a soft kiss to the mottled, sunken skin of his cheek.  
  
“Surprise.”  
  
“Yeah…”  
  
Hancock pulls her in by that same hand, shifting a little so she can rest against his chest and he can use both hands behind her to fish out another, much-needed orange tablet. She quiets there for a while, listening to the shudder of his breaths and the funny, arrhythmic beat of his heart.  
  
“Hey Hancock?”  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“How come we never got together?”  
  
Deacon nearly spits out his beer, choking back a laugh and jerking forward a little with the effort. Hancock looks like an animal caught in the headlights, and glances quickly between Nora’s head and Deacon’s horribly amused smile. The men had reached a tentative kind of truce that hinged entirely on the woman between them, and John can feel it strain under the glare of that smug expression.  
  
“Didn’t – think y’were interested, what with…everything.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Again, he looks back and forth between the woman curled up against him and the man grinning like a kid in a candy store.  
  
“Honestly,” John begins a little hesitantly, “we all kinda thought you were already sweet on someone.”  
  
At this, Nora sits up, using a hand braced against his chest to shift her weight so that she might peer at him in a curious, confused fashion. “Who is ‘all’?”  
  
Deacon at last comes to the ghoul’s rescue, and he sighs a little with relief. “Me, Hancock of course, Piper, Cait – MacCready was in denial for a while, had the sweetest little crush on you – couple’a people back at HQ, a Deathclaw I once asked for a ride into town…”  
  
She breathes something so close to a laugh that Deacon’s heart seems to seize. Hancock chuckles, patting her back amiably while she processes this jumble of information. At last, she turns around so as to comfortably rest her back against Hancock, and throw her legs over Deacon’s lap. “Mac? Really?”  
  
Hancock rumbles another laugh that vibrates through her spine. “Never noticed? Guy followed you like a puppy. Over the damn moon when y’said ya wanted him to teach ya how to shoot.”  
  
Nora smiles a little sadly, and Deacon reaches down to give her leg a little comforting pat. “Hey, no worries,” he consoles lightly, “Cait helped him _get over_ it. Several times. Within earshot.” He grimaces, and she smiles.  
  
After another moment or two of thought, she adds, “So who did everybody think I had it in for?”  
  
Deacon and John exchange a glance in which both insist it is the other’s job to answer that question. This doesn’t go unnoticed, and she lets out another little almost-laugh, sinking a bit lower against Hancock. “That obvious, huh?”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” is Deacon’s immediate, absolutely unconvincing reply. Hancock rolls his eyes.  
  
“Nothin’ wrong with bein’ obvious, Sunshine. ‘Specially when the person in question needs a smack to the head to catch up.” His tone is gentle and, he hopes, comforting, and she gives the arm he has draped around her a little pat of appreciation.  
  
“Never had a chance, I guess,” she laments, and neither half of her company knows how to respond. “He’s just so – good, you know? Just…good.” Nora sighs heavily, and Hancock scoops his hat off her head to replace it on his own, and delivers a little kiss to the crown of her head.  
  
“I dunno. Don’t count yerself out so quick, maybe.”  
  
“After this?” She holds out an arm as if to indicate the entirety of her body, her situation – her collection of terrible experience. “I don’t even like me after all this. There’s not much left to like.”  
  
Both men frown, but both know how she shuts off at the first sign of platitudes. They look from each other to her, and eventually she rolls over to press her face against the back of the couch. “I’m going to sleep,” she says. And they don’t argue. They fall asleep there, themselves, eventually – Hancock’s head lolling back and his mouth hanging open, Deacon snoring against Nora’s hip which he has taken to using as a pillow. They are both there, awake in an instant when she’s upright and sobbing, and they both wait with her for it all to subside. They keep her shrouded in comfortable, comforting touch, and when she sleeps again, they each have a hand in hers.  
  
  
  
  
“You even _met_ the woman, Valentine?”  
  
He shouldn’t have been shocked to hear the raspy voice behind his shoulder, but he was, and Nick turned sharply to glare down at the mayor.  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“What are ya _doin’_?” Hancock stepped between the synth and Daisy’s counter, putting a hand on top of the mostly clean suit coat that had been in negotiation. “Sorry, Daze, it ain’t you. Yer taste is fine as ever. Our friend here just ain’t got a clue what his audience wants.” Daisy’s all-too-knowing smile at this made Nick feel like twitching.  
  
“Lucky for you, big guy,” Daisy drawled, same mischievous expression directed straight through Nick’s soul, “your date doesn’t have the same problem.”  
  
Hancock was grinning. Nick felt like he was short-circuiting somewhere. Did the whole damn town know? The sudden pick up in the whir of his fans caused both ghouls to laugh, and John gave him an amiable smack on the back before pulling the synth along behind him roughly.  
  
  
  
Piper was lounging on the old bed, Cait was leaning against the closed door, and though Deacon was permitted to stay, he put two minds more at ease by facing decidedly in the opposite direction while Nora fumbled through the small box of clothes Daisy had provided for her.  
  
“I’m surprised you guys are doing it all proper, is all,” Piper was saying, unable to keep that smug little smirk off her face.  
  
“It’s only dinner, Pipes,” was Nora’s response, but her smile betrayed her just as much.  
  
“ _I_ can’t believe yer seducin’ a tin can.” Cait was still a little sour about the night before, but Piper had told her just enough to calm the woman into her usual, mostly-toothless surliness.  
  
“Different strokes,” Nora answered, and Piper chuckled.  
  
“He even _got_ anythin’ to stroke?”  
  
“Cait!” Nora was looking pointedly away from anyone, fighting the red that had bloomed in her cheeks. Piper had stuffed a few fingers in her mouth to hold back the laughter, and Deacon was on the verge of collapsing in a fit.  
  
“What? _What_? It’s a fair question, yeah? No use gettin’ too dressed up if y’don’t get to take it off.”  
  
“ _Cait_.” Nora was caught between a hopeless grin and a look that clearly indicated she’d like to disappear on the spot. She busied herself with a zipper, shuffling into the third dress she’d tried on yet. Hancock had even brought in a large mirror, with a sweet “Nothin’ but the best for you, Sunshine” and a tickling peck on her cheek before leaving them to it. Granted, the mirror was broken, and she had to stand at ridiculous angles to see the whole of herself, but it was a kind thought and it did, in fact, help.  
  
“Wow.” Piper looked surprised, and only a touch embarrassed. “Color’s good on ya, Blue.”  
  
“Think so?” She was arching her back to fit into the remaining reflective surface, examining the garment. It had a minor singe mark along the hem, and was clearly faded from a much darker version of the color, but in this day and age those barely even counted as damage. “D, you can look now.”  
  
“You sure? Piper’s not gonna try to smack me again?”  
  
“I _did_ make her promise.”  
  
With a little laugh at the reporter’s audible harrumph, Deacon spun around from his seat on the floor facing the far wall, and stopped. He’d never seen his partner in a dress before. Well, no, he had – but it was the dress of her cover identity, and it was much more clingy and far less…Nora.  
  
“I’d like to second the wow and raise you a _damn_.”  
  
She smirked, rolling her eyes. But he could see the appreciation in her expression, and that was more than enough for him.  
  
“I still don’t understand, but if that Nicky doesn’t have the good sense t’make his move on ya in that, I wouldn’t mind gettin’ a chance.” Cait’s smile was more than a little lecherous, but Nora grinned at her and swept her up in an earnest hug.  
  
“Thank you, Cait.” Her voice was soft, and Cait’s arms settled around her almost before she could check herself, squeezing the shorter woman against her with a year’s worth of silent _missing-you_. But, being Cait, she couldn’t let the moment last, and eventually gently wriggled free, pushing Nora less than a step back.  
  
“All right all right, quit with the drama show. Aren’t you supposed to be on some kinda date?”  
  
Nora laughed, and the room seemed to light up. “In a bit, I think. He said he’d—”  
  
There came a knock on the door, and Piper chucked a soft “speak of the devil” as Nora answered, but it was not the expected synth who ducked into the room. Instead, Daisy stood there, smiling good-naturedly and clutching a small, almost flat box.  
  
“I know you said you didn’t need anything else, sugar, but I found this and I thought – well. I haven’t had a use for ‘em in over a century, and it’s nice to feel like the knockout you are sometimes.” Her grin was full of trouble, and Nora took the box from her in order to peek inside.  
  
Red engulfed her face. She may as well have spontaneously turned into a tato in some strange, backwards Cinderella image. The box was quickly shut again and she whispered an earnest, “thank you.”  
  
“Oh, honey.” Daisy lifted a hand to gently cup Nora’s cheek, and Nora leaned into it gratefully. “You gotta take what happiness you can in this world, and I hope you do.” And because she was Daisy, and couldn’t resist, she added, “More than once, for preference.”  
  
“Okay!” Nora’s voice rose, smile and blush matching in intensity. “Everybody out! I need some me-time.”  
  
  
  
Nick stood impatiently behind Hancock as the ghoul fumbled messily through an open drawer. The dresser seemed largely in disuse, and the first layer of clothing on top had brought with it a huge cloud of dust. At last, however, something black was tossed directly into Nick’s face, and he grumbled as he pulled the fabric out of his vision to examine it.  
  
“These…are just slacks,” he concluded flatly.  
  
“No shit, detective. But they’re pretty clean and they match the tie.”  
  
Sure enough, Nick was able to extract a black tie from the larger mass of the trousers, frowning slightly. “This is just…sort of what I usually wear.” He was at a loss. How long had it been since he’d taken a gal – _any_ gal – out to dinner? Certainly not in this body. That put him at _least_ two hundred years out of date.  
  
“Yeah. And wear those suspenders ya got.” There was a beat in which Hancock seemed to consider something. “And yer holster. And roll yer sleeves up.”  
  
“That sounds like an awful casual look for the occasion. I thought you said she was – getting dolled up.” His face was almost a plea, and John could help but laugh.  
  
Hancock had to reach up a little awkwardly to pat the detective on the shoulder, but he did just the same, grinning like a shark looming under unsuspecting prey. “Trust me, Nick. Sometimes she could get _awful_ chatty on a good Day-Trip. I know what I’m talkin’ about here.”  
  
“The more you talk, the more I feel like I’ve made some horrible mistake.”  
  
“The hand that feeds, brother! Don’t knock it ‘til ya try it, tin-man.”  
  
“Feelin’ more like Dorothy, now.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Nobody.”  
  
“Don’t you go two-timin’ already, I ain’t lookin’ forward to havin’ t’gut ya.”  
  
“It wasn’t – nevermind. Old world thing.”  
  
Hancock rolled his eyes again, heaving a sigh. “Least you two have that in common.”  
  
  
  
Nora breathed in the emptiness of the room – technically Hancock’s, but he’d been more than happy to lend her the use of it. In the absence of others, and standing on the toes of her scuffed kitten heels in order to bend her body awkwardly enough to fit within the visible parts of the mirror, the strangeness of it all began to sink in.  
  
It wasn’t that she didn’t _like_ the idea. She’d barely been able to sleep, and not for the usual reasons. It was just…none of this felt particularly _normal_ in this world. And, she supposed, that was part of what she loved about it – part of what gave her that little thrill. It was something entirely, uniquely them.  
  
And that, really, was also the part that made her nervous. They’d eaten dinner together plenty of times (or, she’d eaten in front of him), but there had never been any kind of performance to it. Half the town definitely wasn’t privy to it, and none of them lent her clothes and ancient lipstick. She loved her friends dearly, appreciated all that they did and all that they gave with the whole of her being. But it would have been nice, maybe, if the entire event could belong to just her and Nick. If they could hold it, like a secret.  
  
But, she reasoned, it wasn’t as if everyone was invited along to dinner with them. She hoped, anyway. He’d mentioned the Third Rail, and though it was the deep-underground part that caused her to flinch, she couldn’t help but think of the attention they might attract conducting such an old world custom in public. They were the both of them well-known enough to be recognized, especially here in Goodneighbor. She could let most of that sort of thing roll off her back like so much water, and when it only concerned Nick, he could, too. Had a devilishly fast tongue about it. But when he was with Nora, when he had to hear the attacks on _her_ character… She could tell it made him uncomfortable.  
  
She hoped he’d be able to relax, tonight. Hoped she’d be able to, too. There wasn’t exactly a strong guarantee on either front.  
  
The quiet knock at her door caused her to jump just a tiny bit, and she sucked in a suddenly much more nervous breath.  
  
Why? It was just Valentine. She’d been with him nearly every day for the better part of a year and a half, when she’d decided to settle into Diamond City full time as his business partner, and many, many times in the field before that. But it had always been…easy. Natural. Suddenly framing everything between them in this kind of unmistakable gesture made it – strange.  
  
She answered the knock with a smile that only grew at the site of him. He couldn’t have dressed himself. He was never that neat – never that _aware_. Did she have Deacon or John to thank for that?  
  
“Uh – hey,” Nick managed, entirely ineloquent.  
  
“Hey yourself.”  
  
He shifted from foot to foot on strained nerves, hands balled in his pockets. He took in the sight of her like a fever dream, and she felt strangely exposed under his eye for the first time. “You look…”  
  
When he couldn’t find an appropriate end to the sentiment, she grinned, leaning against the door frame. “That bad, huh?”  
  
“What? No!” All at once he looked harried, like a man on the far end a mistake he should have seen coming.  
  
“Hey,” Nora spoke softly, taking a cautious step toward him. “Relax.” She stood on tip-toe to plant a brief kiss against his in-tact cheek, and came away smiling at his bewildered – though not displeased – expression. “I’m teasing.”  
  
“Right.” He tried to recover, taking a step back and belatedly offering a hand out to her, which she took gingerly, following him out to the center of the strangely empty room. At least Hancock had given them that – and they were both grateful for it. ‘Awkward’ was hard to navigate just between the two of them, and it would be next to impossible in front of a crowd of their nearest and dearest.  
  
“Are we…having dinner out here?”  
  
At last, he smiled, and she felt a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding release. “Not quite,” was his vague reply, and he guided her to the far side of the room before reaching up and tugging on a beaten up cord that attached at the ceiling. Only, suddenly, it wasn’t the ceiling. It was an unfolding set of attic stairs, revealing a flickering light at their top.  
  
“The tower!” She was grinning, and it was catching. “I thought it had been – blocked off or boarded up or something.”  
  
“It was. Think it had real stairs going up, once, too. Guess it got used as some kinda safehouse just after the bombs. Building got torn up inside.”  
  
“You know, I’d never visited in all the time I lived here.”  
  
“Me, neither.”  
  
“Really?” He’d lent her a hand up the stairs, and her head was finally clearing the floor line. “I kinda had you pegged for a history buff.”  
  
“At a distance, sure. In books. Don’t think I spent a lot of time out of the office, before…” He didn’t have to finish, because she was gasping and trotting up the last of the steps at a neat clip. Nick let a slightly proud smile slide into place. He _had_ called in favors, after all.  
  
“Nick!” There was a delight in her voice that sent him back a year, to the office they’d shared and the nights they’d passed with case files open between them, a mountain of cigarettes in the ashtray, an easy laugh in their mouths. It warmed him.  
  
The space of the tower was dimly but comfortably lit with a few well-placed oil lanterns, speckled with faded neon and moonlight that peeked through the broken and fallen bricks in the walls erected where windows had once been. Slightly to one side of the steps sat a small, rickety table, tucking two chairs beneath it. There was something like a tablecloth draped over it, with minimal staining and tears. There was only one plate arranged, and it was decorated with a Brahmin steak from which she could feel the heat still emanating. It really _was_ something close to normal – their normal. The old normal.  
  
Nick busied himself with lifting the stairs back into place behind them, mostly using this as a means to hide his little flood of pride. At least he’d gotten _something_ right, even if it had mostly been at Hancock’s orders. And, strangely, at Mac’s. Stubborn, churlish kid had put in quite a few valuable suggestions. It made Nick wonder briefly about his late wife, about how Mac may have learned to make her happy. About the man he’d become afterward.  
  
When he was standing straight again, he caught Nora stilled, hands cupped under each elbow, smiling a little strangely at him – though it wasn’t unpleasant. It especially wasn’t unpleasant given how she’d cleaned up. Oh, he always knew he found her – well. He always knew she was attractive. A bit short and a bit round, and a look in her eye like she was always ready to jump onto the next adventure. She did everything like she was running out of time to do it. She lived with a kind of controlled abandon that was mesmerizing in the same way a meteor shower was: Unearthly and rare, and for just a second, it took up the whole world. And here she was, all that stuffed into a rather compact package, wrapped in a green dress that reminded him of grass he was sure he’d never seen with these eyes. She looked like spring – though he couldn’t really remember what spring looked like.  
  
“What’s that look for?”  
  
“This is just nice,” she shrugged, still pinning him in place with those take-no-substitutes, nearly black eyes. “I kind of always thought – you wouldn’t really be interested in any of…this.” She let go of one elbow to gesture expansively to the room at large. He chuckled a little nervously.  
  
“It’s…been a long time.”  
  
She took a slow, careful step toward him, and it was like watching a storm inching over the horizon. “Well, we’ve got that in common. I’m two hundred years out of practice.”  
  
He, too, took a step towards her, without really realizing he was doing it. “I’m – not good at this,” Nick confessed with an uncertain kind of laugh, “I’ve never really – it’s just never really been in my cards. Pretty much settled into the grumpy ol’ bachelor routine for life.”  
  
Nora drew another step closer, leaving just over a foot between them. “Well. Treat it like a case. Start from the ground up. Do you want to be here?”  
  
“ _Yes._ ” His voice came a little more emphatically than he had intended, but it made her smile so he shrugged it off. “I guess I just don’t really get why a gal like you would want to be here, too.”  
  
“I like you.” And she’d said it so – easily. So simply. As naturally as waking up. Innate. It filled his spine with cement. He wasn’t sure he could move. “Next question, detective?”  
  
“I, uh…” He plucked his hat nervously off his head for a moment, running a palm over his forehead like a man who very intimately remembered nervous sweating. But she just stood, shifting her arms to clasp them behind her back, smiling patiently at him. Like she had all the time in the world. For _him_. “I just – don’t understand, Nora. You could have—”  
  
“Nick?”  
  
He paused. “Yeah?”  
  
“Do you trust me?”  
  
“’Course.”  
  
“Then could you do me a favor and remember that I’m right here? That this is my choice. I’m right here.” Still, she smiled. “So where are you?”  
  
His eyelids snapped together in the approximation of a blink. He closed the distance between them, let his hands hover almost touching her arms. Tried to think of some worthy response. And instead, he kissed her.  
  
They came away a little dizzy and a little shy, and decided without saying anything to settle at the table. He’d pulled her chair out for her and she’d laughed in good humor, and they lapsed into comfy silence while she made a fair attempt at slicing off bite-sized-enough pieces of her dinner. After a little while, when most of her plate had been cleaned (she’d never been shy about eating; you couldn’t really afford to be in this day and age), she smirked up at him, brows raised.  
  
“It’s – a little weird to eat in front of you like this.”  
  
“You – want me to stop looking?” Again, the honest worry in his tone. She chuckled.  
  
“I just mean – dinner. You don’t eat, so it seems kind of a strange idea for a date.”  
  
“Not liking it?”  
  
“You always assume the worst, Valentine?” She’d set her utensils down and sat back, grinning hopelessly across at him.  
  
“Assume the worst, hope for the best. Kept me alive so far.”  
  
“Seems a stiff way to live.”  
  
“Maybe.”  
  
“You ever get surprised that way?”  
  
He considered telling her no – which was mostly true. Not a lot about the Commonwealth or the people in it surprised him anymore. But then, there’d been _her_. “More often, lately.”  
  
“That almost sounded like a compliment.”  
  
“Ah, don’t read into it.” But his smile was teasing, and it got a little laugh out of her. All at once, however, his face pulled into a frown. “What time is it?”  
  
“I – don’t know.” She hadn’t thought to bring her pipboy. She rarely wore it these days. “A little after nine, maybe?”  
  
“Damn!” And he was on his feet all at once, scrambling to one corner of the room where a little radio had been propped up on a stool – and on top of it, a lantern. He fiddled with the dials briefly before Kent’s voice crackled into life, summarizing and exalting the just-finished Silver Shroud episode.  
  
Nora beamed, confused but not displeased. “Story time?”  
  
“I – asked for another favor,” was Nick’s only answer, and he was still crouched by the radio, glaring at it until Kent finally announced a small change in the schedule.  
  
“ _I’m taking a break here, folks, for my personal hero. She’s out there keeping Goodneighbor safe. This is so she knows we’re all grateful. We’ll be b-back with episode eighty-nine right after this_.”  
  
Nick breathed a relieved sort of sigh as he stood, the sound of shuffling holotapes click-clacking through the speaker until – those so-familiar, aching notes. And then Ella’s voice was filling the room, not for the first time in present company.  
  
_Just like a chain_ …  
  
Nora couldn’t help the almost goofy grin that curled on her lips, and she sat back with pleasurable surprise. “You did this?”  
  
Nick merely nodded, stepping closer – still a little hesitantly – and offering a hand, palm-up, toward her.  
  
“I thought I told you I didn’t dance.” But her hand was already in his, and he was already gingerly pulling her to her feet. He shrugged with a nervous smile of his own, and set them swaying to the tune. It didn’t take long, this time, for Nora to slip closer, winding her arms around his neck and pushing herself onto her toes to rest flush against his chest. In turn, he looped his hold around her waist, indulging himself in pressing his cheek to her temple, listening to her breathe, taking in the slightly sweaty scent of her hair.  
  
They had, he realized, been close before. Close like this, even. Close enough to feel a heartbeat. It was sort of a natural progression – she’d always been physically affectionate, and he never had it in him to turn her away. It was…nice. She never flinched, never pulled away. Sought him out, even. But even – even then, even huddled together on cold nights when the sea air blew in already frozen, there hadn’t been so much on the line. So much declared. It was easier, probably – you couldn’t risk a hand if you didn’t lay down your cards. And he’d always, always played close to the vest.  
  
He felt her shift against him, tilting her head up just enough for her words to brush his ear. “Cap for your thoughts?” He couldn’t really shiver, but damn if he didn’t feel the need.  
  
“Pay up,” Nick teased, almost by instinct, and she laughed – soft and honest, right in his ear. And his world started to fall away, like that night on the roof, like that night in his office, the night on the beach. She pressed the lightest of kisses just under his lobe, and he was undone. The song slowed and brought time with it, and for the second time – more gracefully, more like he had put some thought into it – he dipped her. She watched him with eyes that took no shit, accepted no substitutes; stared at him like a star watches its planets. Like gravity.  
  
He couldn’t have said, later, how precisely it had happened, or how quickly. But her mouth was on his and she had pulled herself so hard against him they toppled backward onto the floor, laughing into one another’s lips. But then it wasn’t laughter – there was no room for it. He could taste her tongue in his mouth and _god_ , it was like kissing an ashtray and they were _his_ brand of cigarettes. His brain fogged. Fans whirred. She giggled. His world came apart at the seams.  
  
Nick hadn’t realized he’d been looking for the zipper of her dress until he’d found it, gave it a tug and then halted. The reality of himself – the reality of her, and everything that made them different, sliced through the haze in his mind and he scrambled back, looking almost…ashamed of himself.  
  
She was left abandoned on her back for a moment, blinking in surprise at the space above her that had so very recently contained another body. With a little puff of air, she propped herself up on her elbows, brows knit questioningly. “I’m – sorry. If I’m going too fast…”  
  
She was biting her lip, she was _biting her lip_ and he hadn’t felt so damn human, so damn _alive_ since…since before he could make his own memories. “No,” he panted, “I just…” But what could he say, really? Thanks, this was fun, but I see a whole lot of regret in your future. Let’s go back to the purely platonic relationship we never really had. Like she’d buy it for even a second. Like she’d let him leave it that way. She was as tenacious as he could be, only she directed it at _him_. What a terrible thing to be loved so furiously.  
  
The weight of _that_ thought hit him like a train. Maybe he’d always known, in a kind of distant way. They’d spent enough time together to share the sentiment. But, at least on his part, it had always been reserved. He’d always known his place in her life – in the world at large. And suddenly there came a rush of every distinct, vivid memory of her hand in his, of her body sneaking into the warmth of his trench coat, of her head against his shoulder and her eyes heavy with sleep, of her lips on his cheek, forehead, mouth – _god_ , her lips on his mouth. Something in him was trying to shut down. This wasn’t – this wasn’t how things were supposed to play out. It didn’t end this way. He didn’t get the girl. That’s not how it worked.  
  
“Hey.” Her voice was distant, as though at the other end of a long tunnel, but the weight of her after she’d crawled toward him, practically in his lap, tethered him back to the present, and he came crashing down into himself again. “Hey,” she repeated, and he could feel her palms on his cheeks, see the somehow stern concern in her eyes. And – god – he _loved_ her.  
  
“Hey, Valentine,” Nora called again, soft but firm. He blinked in response, but it was enough to let her know he was back; he was there – with her. “I’m right where I wanna be, okay?”  
  
Nick looked up at her, fingers unconsciously finding their way to hook over her wrists, keeping her hands close, keeping _her_ close. “I’m – broken,” was all he could think to say.  
  
“And I’m not?” Her smile was a little sad, but she curled up against his chest, and his arms fell naturally around her. She sighed, and he could feel the air move inside her – so damn alive, so damn human. “Nobody makes it in this world without getting a little busted up,” she continued eventually, twisting around to rest her back against his chest, taking his hands in her own and examining his fingers idly. This – this was familiar. How often had she tucked herself up against his side, and how often had he let her? He felt himself begin to ease, felt his chin rest against the top of her shoulder. He sighed.  
  
“You remember that day on the beach? Summer was almost over, and there hadn’t been a radstorm in a week.” He could hear the smile in her voice, and somehow it soothed him.  
  
“How could I forget?” He held his hands palm-up for her as she traced the lines in one in-tact palm, the scratches in the metal of the other.  
  
“That’s when I knew, you know. Not even because…” She laughed, but he understood. Their first kiss had been there – the first of only a handful, and he could recall each with perfect clarity. He’d held that night, in particular, like a treasure. “It was that you’d gotten the beach cleaned up. That you’d even thought of something so – well, kind of silly, I guess. All the dangers in this world and you were worried about my view. And I thought – there he is. That’s why I’m still here. Because he’s that kind of man. And I knew I was gonna stay, even if you didn’t feel the same. Even if you didn’t want me.” She let out a brief, self-deprecating kind of scoff. “I didn’t even really know if you _could_ want me.”  
  
“Well I can put those fears to bed,” he offered lightly, and the smile on her face warmed her so thoroughly he swore he could feel her body temperature rise. A little thrill ran like a bolt of lightning up his spine.  
  
“It wasn’t ever the metal plates or the wires or—”  
  
“The gaping holes?”  
  
“No.” They shared a chuckle, and its warmth reminded him vaguely of whiskey on cold nights, head just slightly swimming and smile easy. “It was – the way you wore Diamond City like a coat. Like a shield. You were always married to the job, and I understand that I just – it seemed like maybe you didn’t _want_ anything else in your life. And that’s fine, I was prepared to accept that. I had accepted it, I think. But that night on the beach – I knew I was staying anyway. I was free, I could go anywhere finally, but I didn’t want to.”  
  
The pair again fell into silence, and his arms slipped into two loops around her waist, her own resting on top of his with easy, natural comfort. _This_ was how it had been. Maybe not ever so pointedly, unabashedly intimate, but this closeness – the simplicity and comfort of it all. This was what ached in him when she’d disappeared.  
  
“Jenny used to say that, I think.”  
  
“Mm?” Her voice was mild but she stiffened slightly, and Nick’s hold on her tightened instinctively, trying to press reassurance into her.  
  
“That I – that the old Nick was married to the job. Said something like, she may have worn the ring but she’d always be his mistress.” Nora laughed out loud, and his expression darkened a little in embarrassment. “What?”  
  
“Nothing, it’s just – Nate used to say something similar to me. There was always a case, always something that needed my attention. I loved my job. I miss it, sometimes. He was so happy when we took the year off for Shaun. And I was…bored, really. I felt so bad – I loved them both, so much. But I need to be up and doing, you know me. He said that’s what he liked about me, that I was ‘a force of my own’, he called it. But I think it always made him a little sad.” She paused with another little sigh, and he let the thumb of his good hand trail a small path back and forth on her side. He hadn’t exactly pictured ending up here, on the dusty floor, but he couldn’t say it bothered him. They’d been huddled together in far worse, far more uncomfortable places.  
  
“Do you remember loving Jenny?” Her questions were always soft like that, and yet they never failed to wake him up like cold water to the face.  
  
“I guess I never really felt like she was mine to love. Not _really_ mine, anyway.”  
  
“You really see the two of you as separate, huh?”  
  
“I try to,” he answered, a little more bitterly than he meant to, though he only realized this when she’d given his arm an apologetic squeeze.  
  
“I feel that way too, I think. Sometimes.” She shifted a little more comfortably in his arms, and he leaned back against the wall behind him to allow her the room. “Like there’s this – disconnect, between before the war and after. It was – the whole of a second, maybe. There was everything before, and then there was the empty vault. But it started to feel more and more like…it wasn’t really my life. I wasn’t really the same person.”  
  
“Yeah,” was all Nick could think to say, and he tucked his chin a little closer to her neck. She breathed a little easier, and they enjoyed another few minutes of silence.  
  
“Do you remember – the old Nick… _wanting_ Jenny?”  
  
He paused, growing a little stiff. “I…feel like that’s a trick question.” She laughed, but that did little to ease his tension.  
  
“I’m sorry. Kinda put you on the spot, I guess.”  
  
“Why would it matter, anyhow?”  
  
“I guess – because there’s really only one way I know how to do things – this. And it didn’t actually occur to me until tonight that – that might not work for you, and suddenly I don’t know where I’m going.”  
  
“What might not work?” But there was something in his tone she recognized, and she elbowed him lightly in the ribs.  
  
“Don’t tease. I’m being serious! I wasn’t really listening to Cait earlier, because – you know, it’s _Cait_ , but I guess she might have had a point. I don’t really know if you even have…” She trailed off, apparently aware of what she’d been progressing to say out loud. Their silence was all at once a little tense.  
  
“Please tell me you and Cait did not have a conversation about my – business.”  
  
Nora guffawed, doubling over forward, and he smiled, but that didn’t stop the sudden, loud rush of fans fighting furiously to cool down his systems.  
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. In my defense, I didn’t start it.”  
  
“Of course you didn’t,” he grimaced.  
  
“I think it was only so she could segue into hitting on me, anyway.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Oh, you know Cait,” Nora had turned around to face him, resting back on her haunches, “just wanted me to know she’d take care of me if you couldn’t.”  
  
“ _Really_.” Something in his voice gave her pause, but he’d already hooked two hands around her waist and was pulling her forward again. She didn’t resist, sliding her knees easily to either side of his hips so she could hover just slightly above him, hands falling to rest on his shoulders. “Who says I can’t?”  
  
“Now, I wasn’t—” But a set of metal fingers was already curling around the back of her neck to pull her down through the inch that separated them, and she laughed gratefully into the kiss. There was something electric about it now. They’d kissed before, of course, but always almost as if by accident. Two ships in the night, Nick might have said. Pulled in by the forces around and between them. But now it was a choice, and they were both making it, and that realization caused her to swallow a groan and pull back just slightly.  
  
“Nick.” She was, to her embarrassment, a little out of breath already. It had been a long time in general, and for a good portion of that time she’d been thinking about – hoping for – this, exactly. “You don’t – you don’t have to do anything just because you think I want—”  
  
He almost laughed. Now, of all times, she was questioning herself? Nora, who had always been so forward and open with her affections? The hand just above her hip pulled her in again, flush against him, and she fixed him with wide eyes set in a rather surprised expression.  
  
“That’s – new.”  
  
“Not really,” he answered, a new, slightly shy tone belying his hesitation.  
  
“New for me.”  
  
“I _did_ tell you.”  
  
“Nicholas Valentine,” she chided, and he ran cold and then hot in the same second, “I would _definitely_ remember if we had _ever_ had a conversation about your – business.” She used his own word in a teasing kind of way, but he could tell that, for the first time, she was filling silence so she wouldn’t fall headlong into bashful territory. He found it strangely charming.  
  
“When we first met,” he reminded her.  
  
“You’ve never been that forward in all your days.”  
  
“All the parts?”  
  
“…minus a few red blood cells,” she recalled, settling her weight down in shock – in a way that inadvertently caused him to tense beneath her. “Oh my god. Have you been so dirty this whole time?”  
  
“Not the whole time. Just once in a while.”  
  
“And here I thought you were so _innocent_.” She pronounced the word in a sing-song voice, and they shared a grin as she braced her palms against the wall to either side of his head, leaning down again to brush the tip of his nose with her own. “Thought I’d be taking advantage of you, somehow.”  
  
He laughed, shifting his hand to thumb idly at that zipper that ran down her side. Something in him had awakened, was fueling him like too much of too high an octane. He was on fire again, and she was the match – the oil, the gasoline, and the flame itself, all in one. “Well,” he offered simply, “consider this an invitation.”  
  
  
  
They took their time, for a while. The novelty of this particular brand of intimacy was not lost on either of them, and neither seemed keen to let any facet of it go unexplored. The zipper of her dress had opened down to her hip, and his good hand had already dipped inside, taking in the warmth of her waist, the side of her chest, the small of her back. His tie had been loosened considerably, suspenders pushed off his shoulders and buttons down to his waist popped free of their confines. He had been visibly nervous at first – Nick wore enough layers to bear the brunt of a new nuclear winter most days; he was never exactly body-confident. But she’d met him with the same hands that delicately marveled over metal and synthetic fingers alike, and she pressed her palms into the buzz of his moving parts and wildly spinning fans.  
  
It wasn’t until those clever fingers had found the open side of his neck, had dared to brush ever so carefully against the interior of skin, the curve of a bundle of wires, that a new urgency began to get the better of him. His hands were fumbling under the hem of her dress almost unconsciously, sliding over her thighs until hitting strangely familiar little buckles. His sensory recognition skipped like a scratched disk and he issued such a raw, involuntary groan into her mouth that she laughed.  
  
“Find something you like?” She was grinning, and he couldn’t have formed anything like a smart reply if he’d tried. So he didn’t. Nora pulled back, however, and rose to her feet, which left him in a brief moment of disappointment until she’d shimmied her shoulders and arms free and let that dress pool around her ankles, stepping neatly out of her low heels. Something popped and sparked within him, and something – something else _growled_.  
  
Nick had seen her in various states of undress – it was hard to help treat a wound to the shoulder or stomach or thigh without getting comfortable with the sight of your partner’s bare skin. But never… Not like this. Not so – intentionally. So privately. Like a secret. He drank in the sight of her – the scars knotted around her shoulders and biceps, the silvery cross under her collar bone where he’d watched Doc Carrington pull out the bullet, the ribbons of stretch marks under her arms, her breasts, the little pudge-overhang her belly, the sprinkling of moles that counted to at least fourteen between head and toe. He tried to record it, to keep it. To keep _this_. And that garter belt, threadbare and darkened with age as it was, still holding up to mostly in-tact stockings. How in the world had she gotten her hands on a set of those – in such good condition, too? There were a couple of patches of missing fabric, a few vertical runs that exposed the real, nut color of her skin in little successive strips. But – god. He didn’t care. He didn’t care at all.  
  
“It’s rude to stare,” Nora mock-scolded, hands on hips and a single brow arched. He swallowed air.  
  
“I don’t give a damn.” He didn’t have anything else to say – nothing came sensibly or coherently to mind. But she laughed, and performed a small twirl to offer a more complete view, and – and _Jesus_ , those stockings, with those dark seams running all the way up the back of her legs. He let out a pained kind of breath that he didn’t need, and when her eyes were on his she could see the new kind of desperation in his face.  
  
She laughed again, beginning to fiddle with one clip at her thigh as she inched closer again, but before he could stop himself, his metal hand was on top of hers, halting it mid-action. “Don’t?” He suggested, voice noticeably hoarse. Her smile was wicked, but ultimately pleased, and she was kneeling over him again in an instant, hands inside his shirt and tongue inside his mouth. He struggled his arms inelegantly out of his shirt as she rather urgently pulled his tie free. There was a hunger in both of them now, feeding and starving off of its presence in the other.  
  
He struggled with the strap of her bra like an overzealous teenager for nearly a minute before she laughed and reached back to assist him, leaving him no time at all to feel too embarrassed about it. Try as he might to calm himself, his hands were at her chest before he knew how to stop them, and she was letting out something between a gasp and a laugh when a metal finger ran softly over a nipple. Just as he was about to bite down on his eagerness and apologize, she had her hands at the button of his trousers and fumbled in a desperate kind of way he couldn’t help but find endearing.  
  
With a little grunt, Nick shifted his weight forward, rolling Nora with him until she was on her back among the folds of her discarded dress and his hips were more or less free. He had reached a hand down to assist her, but found she’d already thrown open his zipper and was in the process of yanking his trousers lower by slipping her toes into the loosened waist band and pushing. “Talented,” he muttered against her neck, and she laughed again, arms looping under his a little desperately, fingertips pressing into the plates that formed his shoulder blades.  
  
His intention was to be gentle – gentlemanly, even. He had _intended_ to pump the brakes a little, to loop back around to their previous, more careful pace. But her ankles had locked behind his hips and had pulled him forward and the _heat_ —  
  
He had been on the painful end of actual fire before. He’d had a few bad dealings with molten steel. In learning to feed the living boy who had been staying with him, he had more than once gotten into a tussle with the stove burner. But this, this was close to nuclear. She was like touching naked flame without any of the pain. It was nearly too much. It was _going_ to be too much if he didn’t get ahold of himself.  
  
It was ridiculous how ill-prepared Nick found himself. He had…memories. Private memories that didn’t exactly belong to him. But the sensations were real. He could remember how Jenny felt, sprawled on their bed and writhing. He even remembered orgasms, both shared and private. He had, a few times, experimented with his own, and concluded that while not quite the same, the sensations were not too dissimilar, either. Less intense, perhaps, but also less messy. Ultimately, of little interest. But this – he could feel gears grinding against themselves, could hear the little hiss of a heat sink reaching its limit. He took in a breath if only in the hopes that the air he didn’t need would help to cool his system.  
  
But she was breathing soft whining sounds into his ear, and his body, for the first time almost entirely out of his usually micromanaged control, wouldn’t allow him _not_ to move. Nails were curling into the synthetic skin of his back and he could hear his name, half a whisper, in her mouth, and he was pushing into her like he wanted to close every millimeter of distance between them.  
  
And then – it wasn’t whining. It wasn’t the little moans that had started to escape. Her whole body had all at once tightened and the whimpering in his ear was strained and almost painful. He drew back, weight supported on his elbows to either side of her head, and met Nora’s face – streaked with new tears running sidelong over temples, lips screwed tight together and face red with the effort to keep her sobs contained. Panic rose in him like the flutter of weightlessness during a free-fall.  
  
“I’msorryI’msorry,” she was already pleading, turning her face away and squeezing her eyes tight in an effort to stave off the crying. But he cupped a hand under her cheek, thumbing away one hot tear as it traced its way to her hair.  
  
“Hey.” His voice was soft and full of fear, and he urged her, very gently, to look at him. She had so rarely cried. It wasn’t that she was shy about it, or even ashamed. She’d cried once while reading the last chapter of a book, and hadn’t apologized once when he’d come to see what was the matter and she’d sobbed sloppily into his coat. She’d cried, too, when they couldn’t save that cat from the mongrels on the street. Nora had never been one to balk at her own emotions or sensitivity. But she always seemed so…steadfast. She took the whole world in stride. Crying was still rare enough to launch a full system crash within him.  
  
“Hey.” She was an ugly crier, she had always said. He didn’t know how to disagree with that – she got puffy and red the way most humans did when the tears were plentiful and earnest. But all he could see was the pain underneath, and that pierced him to the bone. Her looks never entered into the equation. “Hey, stay with me, okay?” She lowered a hand to grip the wrist below her cheek, whole body shaking with the effort to swallow whatever episode had been triggered. “We can stop, it’s all right.”  
  
And suddenly Nora’s hands were bracing the sides of his neck, fingers slipping over his nape and tipping his hat forward accidentally to the point that it rolled off to one side, wavering like a large, soft quarter before stilling against the floor. “No,” she was telling him, shaking her head and sniffling, “no I just – it’s just –”  
  
“It’s all right,” he tried to soothe, running that hand that had been at her cheek over the crown of her head, brushing fingers gently through her hair. “It’s fine. We can stop.” _Why_ hadn’t he considered her trauma before they’d done – well, anything? Why had he even thought the tail-end of a mental breakdown was the appropriate place and time to make a move? If we wasn’t the biggest damn pillock--  
  
“ _No_ ,” and she was more emphatic now, blinking away enough of her tears to match him eye for eye. “I mean – unless you – I just…” She breathed in deep and let it out in a shuddering kind of sigh. “I’m safe,” she whispered, and whether it was to him or to herself, understanding dawned.  
  
“You’re safe,” he confirmed, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “You’re safe.” A kiss against her temple, against each apple of her cheeks, against the tip of her nose which garnered a giggle (to his not so insignificant satisfaction). “You’re safe.” He kissed the corner of her mouth, the edge of her jaw, the slope of her neck which she opened for him with a sigh. “You’re safe.” She pushed herself against him and he brought back the arm not supporting his weight to brace that hand against her thigh.  
  
“You’re safe.”  
  
Eventually, the lanterns emptied themselves of their fuel. In the dark, Nora gasped, and Nick saw stars.  
  
  
  
  
“So…that was less of a mess than I’m used to.”  
  
They had settled in the dark with his back, now bare, against the wall, and her back against the slightly crooked plates of his chest. He’d found a cigarette because of course he had, they would always have at least one between the both of them, and they passed it back and forth with a familiar easiness. His legs sprawled to either side of her, and she’d curled her own into her chest, letting him run a palm gingerly over her knee while the metal hand waited patiently for his turn with the cigarette.  
  
“I aim to please,” was his answer, and she chuckled.  
  
“Mm.”  
  
The glow of his eyes and of the rosy end of the cigarette lit her outline in soft yellows and oranges. He wondered, vaguely, if this was what people felt when they looked at art. He could appreciate a good piece when he saw it, could appreciate the effort and skill put into it, but he’d never felt particularly moved. Apart, of course, from now. He wondered if that counted.  
  
“So…” She began again, finally slipping the filter back between his fingers. He was careful to nurse his smoke with his head pointed away from her, keeping the little trapped flame away from her now considerably mussed hair. “What’s it like for you?”  
  
Nick choked out a hot laugh as she guided his hand, cigarette and all, to her lips to facilitate another drag. “It’s – being stuck in a positive feedback loop, really.”  
  
“Wouldn’t that make your system more unstable?”  
  
“Smart girl,” he teased, and she leaned more heavily against him. He wasn’t going to complain. “It does. That’s – sort of it. Everything loops around until the sensory system needs a reboot.”  
  
“You _reboot_?”  
  
“Essentially.”  
  
“How do you stay conscious?”  
  
“Power system’s fine. Everything’s wired in separately. One system surges, shuts down, others let up a little power to fuel the reboot. Go numb for a second, though.”  
  
“You lose feeling?”  
  
“Briefly.”  
  
She issued a thoughtful “hmm” at this, at last releasing his hand so he could nurse the cigarette for himself. “So,” Nora continued after a brief, pondering silence, “is that…good? It sounds kind of like it’s bad for you. Does it feel bad?”  
  
Nick laughed, nosing gently into the side of her neck and stealing a kiss there. The contented little sound she made could keep him warm on a cold night – if he needed that sort of thing. “It’s not bad,” he assured, with a nervous kind of chuckle. He’d never exactly been very open about discussing these kinds of things. He was the sort to clear his throat and use tame language to dance around the subject entirely. “I don’t think it _could_ be bad for me, either. Institute never gave me much, but they did build me with hardiness in mind. I’m still kickin’ after all this time.”  
  
“So…” It was as though it had become her favorite word. “Do you _like_ it?”  
  
He laughed again, slipping the filter between her lips and leaning forward a little to nip at a patch of skin just behind her ear. “Do _you_?” His voice was low, and she shivered. He allowed himself a moment to revel in it.  
  
“Point taken, I guess.” There was a sense of pleasure in her voice he could feel himself wanting to cultivate, and his good hand lead his arm to loop around her middle, pulling her a little closer.  
  
“Hey Valentine.”  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“How long have you wanted to do this?”  
  
He sucked in an unnecessary breath and paid the price by coughing the last ash of the cigarette out of its mouth. Flicking the dead filter into the now less-lighted dim, Nick tucked his chin over her shoulder again with a thoughtful pause. “This feels like another trick.”  
  
“Really? Right now, right here, after – well. You think I’m going to judge you for how long you’ve lit a candle for me?”  
  
“I’m – bad at this,” he repeated the sentiment with such self-disappointment that she lifted his idle metal hand and pressed a warm, soft kiss to its palm.  
  
“You’re doing fine.”  
  
“Are you asking me how long I’ve – thought about _things_ , or how long I’ve thought about you?”  
  
“Both,” was her immediate answer, and he should have guessed.  
  
“You…” He paused, ordering his thoughts more sensibly than they came to him. “It was after…after the fort,” he decided to leave out their quarry’s name, not wanting to sully the moment, “you were so…you were usually so hopeful, so determined. After that it was – hard, seeing you that way. Like you were close to giving up. Like the Commonwealth had finally got you.”  
  
“I thought so too.” Her voice was soft and a little sad, and he held her tighter for it.  
  
“But then later, when we made camp…”  
  
“You stayed next to me,” she recalled, fondness forming in her tone.  
  
“And you took my hand –” he flexed metal fingers in the distinct recollection of how she very much _hadn’t_ pulled away “—like it was – so – normal. And fell asleep.”  
  
“And you kept watch.” She was grinning.  
  
“I always kept watch,” he replied gruffly, but the lack of change in her demeanor indicated she wasn’t buying his grumpy routine. She rarely did.  
  
“So that’s me,” Nora continued relentlessly. “What about _things_?” She used emphasis in that teasing way she had, and he groaned with a roll of his eyes.  
  
“Does that _really_ matter?”  
  
“You’ve got me sitting here naked as a jaybird and you can’t tell me how long you’ve wanted to fuck me, Nick Valentine?”  
  
He went still. She felt a small twitch of pressure at her back and couldn’t help a smirk. Good to know _that_ kind of reaction was still at her disposal. This was turning out to be quite the education on synths. Or, at least Nick’s particular model.  
  
“Since…” There was an adorable kind of discomfort in her voice, but she stifled a giggle lest he give up completely in that huffy way of his. “The beach,” he murmured finally, sounding distinctly embarrassed by it all. Such a _gentleman_. It only fueled her grin.  
  
“That’s not so long ago,” Nora noted. “Long time after the fort, too.”  
  
“I just – hadn’t really even…it just seemed so far out of the realm of possibility before then.”  
  
“And after? Think about it much?”  
  
“More…than is probably appropriate.”  
  
She let out an extended little whistle, which was mostly just a pitched breath of air that made him chuckle. She had always been such a bad whistler. “Gosh, Nick, never took you for such a scoundrel.”  
  
“Here I was thinking you were starting to like that about me.”  
  
“But still! How distinctly un-gentlemanly of you.”  
  
“Hey now, you’re the one who kissed me, remember?”  
  
“Yeah,” she laughed, shrugging. “I just figured if I kept waiting for you, I’d be waiting forever.”  
  
The silence they lapsed into was tinted ever so slightly with sadness. He leaned down to press a couple of long kisses over her shoulder. “Sorry,” he whispered against her skin, “I’ve got a bit of jackass in my code.”  
  
She laughed in such a welcome way, and craned her head to steal a proper kiss from him. “I wouldn’t say that.”  
  
Nick opened his mouth to reply, but there came a deafening kind of _CRACK_ that split the air outside. Then another, and a few more in quick succession.  
  
“Gunfire,” Nora asserted, and she was already on her feet.  
  
“Shit – damn.” He fumbled a little helplessly for his pants. “Where’s my damn—” But she was already handing him his long-shucked bandolier, pistol faithfully tucked in its holster. “You got a gun?”  
  
“No,” she answered, and he could hear the rustle of fabric as she shoved herself into her clothes. “I’ve got my knife.”  
  
“Your knife—where the hell—”  
  
“Who knew garter belts could be so useful, right?”  
  
He had to force himself away from an entirely inappropriate train of thought as he wrenched his pistol free, discarding his holster for lack of time. “What – where are you _going_?” He demanded, even as a hand scrabbled for the latch to the folding stairs.  
  
“Window’s faster,” was her only explanation as she lifted the chair she’d been seated in earlier that evening and rammed its legs forcefully into the remaining bricks that blocked out the night. There hadn’t been many still intact, and the mortar had long since been dried and weathered into uselessness. A handful of bricks went tumbling free, and she was out of the space provided before he could stop her.  
  
She’d be the death of him, one way or another.  
  
Under the sound of more gunplay, Nora nimbly made her way down to the arch of the state house’s main roof, and slid slightly on her bare heels to reach the edge. She ran along the white trim and vaulted over the lowest edge of the side, brick wall, moving from the arch of the door below to the balcony proper to the ground in a handful of seconds. She’d always been agile like that. He had admired it many times before, just as he was now – begrudgingly, while he tried to keep after her without popping a servo or damaging his hydraulics.  
  
Nick was rounding the corner of Goodneighbor’s main square almost a minute behind her when he felt a hand reach out and seize him by the wrist, pulling him in. He knew better than to resist at a time like this, and allowed Nora to pull him into the shadow of the wall. He peered over her head to follow her attention, and could make out a slightly scattered crowd of citizens, and one familiar red frock coat that had been soundly laid out, a darker, more insistent red pooling around its shoulder. He tensed, as if to move forward, but Nora’s grip on him tightened. She jerked her head to the center of the crowd, where above Hancock’s prone form stood a figure entirely at ease, swathed in black leather and hoisting a laser rifle more clean and put together than anything scrounged from the Commonwealth ruins.  
  
“ _Courser_ ,” she hissed between her teeth, and now Nick was the one who had to hold her back. She glared at him like she meant to resist for a moment, but then turned her attention back to the debacle at the sound of a cool, calm voice.  
  
“I’m here for the Railroad agent,” the man announced. There was no mistaking that cold, unaffected tone. She’d heard it too often within the confines of the institute, and it always lit her skin with disgusted goosepimples. “Give me her location, and no further harm needs to come to your…” His lip curled in distaste. “ _City_.”  
  
Hancock was sitting up, more or less facing Nora given his angle, holding his shoulder while his injured arm hung horribly limp. He was cracking a horrible smile, but she could feel it – he’d seen her. Maybe he'd seen Nick, his yellow eyes in the dark, and just assumed she’d be along. The losing end of the rifle was trained on the mayor in an instant, causing the courser to turn entirely away from the pair in the shadows.  
  
“Ya know,” Hancock was rasping, out of breath in a way that made Nora’s blood run cold, “you Institute types never were good at offering the carrot before the stick.”  
  
Behind that familiar tricorner hat, she could see another pair of recognizable figures at the far end of the crowd. Taking advantage of their place in relative shadow, MacCready was already easing his rifle around to his front. Nora lifted her hand, and breathed a sigh of relief when he spotted her – she shouldn’t have been surprised. His entire livelihood relied on his sharp eye and perfect aim.  
  
The mercenary lifted his head in question at her, and Cait soon followed his gaze to the pair pressed against the wall. Her fists balled tight.  
  
In direction, Nora folded her fingers so that index finger and thumb formed a kind of gun shape, aimed this upward and pumped her arm once – miming a single shot in the air. Understanding dawned visibly on the faces of Mac and Cait, and backing a little ways away to keep himself out of immediate sight, Mac very quietly cocked his rifle.  
  
It all seemed to happen at once, in a single explosion of movement and sound. The gunshot sent a wave of screaming through the crowd, and every present body began to flee this way and that in fear and confusion. Hancock had his combat knife in his hand with otherworldly speed, and had brought it down _hard_ into the knee of the synth above him. Nora shot diagonal into the crowd, ducking low to avoid immediately being spotted, and as the rifle lifted in the courser’s hand toward Hancock’s face, Nick took a shot at the arm that bore the gun’s weight.  
  
The force of the shot caused him to jerk, but the man didn’t drop his weapon. He simply turned to face the source of the bullet, and raised his rifle with a kind of sadistic smile on his otherwise impassive face. “You were recalled years ago,” he noted blandly. His finger squeezed the trigger, and Nick braced himself – there, at the very least, would go another skin plate. He was running out of those.  
  
But that searing burst of energy went mostly skyward as the courser was jerked back, letting out a surprised sort of noise at the small arm that had hooked suddenly around his neck from behind. “You _want_ me?” Nora was alive with a fury that promised immediate, irrefutable fatalities. “You _got_ me.” Her free hand came around in a fast arc, planting the length of her switchblade in its entirety into the soft flesh just above the courser’s collarbone. Without mercy, without relish, with the solemnity of duty realized, she yanked the blade to one side, and with a small shower of arterial spray and a gurgling noise, let the man fall forward at her feet.  
  
Nora panted. The scrambling crowd came to a halt. Mac and Cait broke through the stunned citizens, Piper appeared from the opposite side of the square, and Nick was on the blood-spattered woman in a second. A hand in a leather glove, slick with its own blood, had reached up weakly to snatch at the detective’s passing leg, but Hancock drove a heel down into those knuckles, and unlike his dear friend, he _did_ relish the sound of bones cracking.  
  
“Jesus, Blue, are you okay?” Her hands were on Nora’s shoulders.  
  
“What the hell was that?” Mac was demanding.  
  
“I thought we blew those fuckers up!” Cait exclaimed.  
  
Nora tried to gently free herself of the small gathering, bending down to her knees in front of John and gingerly examining his shoulder. Her brows knit. “How did he hit you? His rifle – you shouldn’t be bleeding.” She knew the signs of laser wounds all too well. The wound would be burnt and acrid, but it would at least be cauterized.  
  
“Not very polite of the bastard, right?” Hancock’s laugh was too breathy for Nora’s comfort, and she looked up to Nick who, before she could even speak, nodded and made a dash for the doors of the Memory Den. “Got Fahr’s hand canon off her, tried to turn it on her. Got in the way.”  
  
“How clumsy of you,” she teased with a slightly shaking voice, brushing fingertips down the side of his arm gingerly. “Can you feel anything? Can you move your fingers?”  
  
“I’m gonna be just fine, Sunshine,” he soothed, patting her shoulder with his uninjured but still bloody hand. “Amari’ll patch me right up. She does good work.” He jerked his head to urge her attention to the woman who was, even now, rushing across the street, Nick fast on her heels.  
  
“You, though,” his smile was strange, now. Like real amusement, not just bravado. “You should go get cleaned up.”  
  
“Me?” She almost laughed. “You’re a mess.”  
  
“I’m also dressed.”  
  
Nora blinked. She looked down.  
  
It had been dark and neither of them had been focused on looking nice. Nick stood shirtless, his suspenders hanging at his hips, and suddenly uncomfortably aware of the fact. Nora had his button down barely fastened over her front, and the length of it only just reached the tops of her still-clipped stockings. Neither of them had managed to put their shoes on.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Mac had his duster off almost at once, and she took it from him gratefully, fighting the flush that was creeping along to cover the space between her neck and the tips of her ears. Nick had a sympathetic, protective arm around her shoulders, though she wondered if this also served to hide himself from view, at least a little.  
  
Cait and her beau-apparent were looking back and forth between their friends as Amari and an impromptu enlisted citizen were lifting Hancock to his feet.  
  
“Shite,” Cait said.  
  
“You owe me ten caps,” Mac replied.  
  
“Ten caps he had equipment to work with. I don’t see any proof of that.”  
  
“Oh my god.” Nora had her face in her hands. Nick was the embodiment of surly disapproval.  
  
“Messy hair,” Piper was beginning to count a list on her fingers, grinning horribly, “each other’s clothes, no shoes, Nick doesn’t even have his _hat_ …” The synth patted his bare head with this realization before glaring around again, huffing in displeasure, though this particular observation had them all nodding in agreement – even Cait, though reluctantly. Man never went anywhere without his hat. “IIIII’d say that’s pretty much proof they figured out _something_.”  
  
“Okay!” Nora’s tone was bright with brittle humiliation. “I’m going to put on some pants, and then we are _all_ going to check on John and _none_ of us are going to talk about this ever again!”  
  
“Not on your life,” was Mac’s answer, while Cait and Piper laughed.  
  
They left the trio to their amusement, and headed back into the state house. They eased into one another’s company naturally, laughing occasionally in their own right, and generally expending what adrenaline remained. He slipped into his old shirt, and she kept the one she wore, tucking it into her jeans and balling the sleeves up at her elbows so she could maintain use of her hands. Shoes were located, belts were fastened. Assisting one another dress had very nearly caused a delay, but Nora batted Nick’s hands away with a smirk before sliding her fingers through his and marching them down to the Memory Den.  
  
The main floor was empty but for Irma, who directed them downstairs with a strange smile, telling them everyone had already gathered there. When Nora passed the woman, Nick’s grip tightened just a fraction, and Irma met her with a wink that would have been illegal in any other town. Hot in the cheeks once again, Nora scurried down the stairs after only a half-second of hesitation.  
  
Nick had not appeared to have forgotten her last trip here, however, and he pulled her close as they descended, whispered a reminder in her ear that brought a soothed kind of smile to her face, and kept her hand firmly in his own when they arrived.  
  
_Safe. You’re safe.  
  
_ Hancock’s skinny torso was bare, his shirt and jacket pooled around his waist in Amari’s chair while she stood at his back, working delicately at the wound.  
  
“Clean shot,” the mayor announced, grinning. Nora couldn’t help but smile in return, as much as she felt like giving the man a good smack. “Right through.”  
  
“You gonna be okay?”  
  
“He will if he does not exert himself.” Amari’s tone was one of teachery disapproval, and carried harmonics that reached into the genetic memory of all present and gave them the distinct feeling they should be standing in a corner. “I am afraid miss Fahrenheit rarely accepts my advice, but I suspect if _you_ urge her–” she glanced briefly but pointedly at Nora “—she might be more inclined to keep our mayor out of trouble.”  
  
“Hancock out of trouble? When Brahmin fly.” Cait was shaking her head with a crooked smirk.  
  
“I saw that once,” Mac reflected.  
  
“Gettin’ thrown by a supermutant doesn’t count,” she shot back.  
  
“I don’t know – it went pretty far.”  
  
Hancock was apparently finding this all greatly amusing, and Nora noted the double doses of Med-X on a tray by his side. It didn’t surprise her in the least that he needed an extra shot. His system was flooded with so much already; she was more surprised he was still capable of feeling pain. But John’s eyes fell to the tangled fingers between Nick and Nora, and his grin exceeded a decent level of smugness.  
  
“So,” he began, a little louder than he probably meant to, but Nora could easily imagine his ear was still ringing from such a close-range shot. “You two finally—”  
  
“I am _not_ above kicking an injured ghoul while he’s down,” Nora warned, but her smile gave this threat very little weight.  
  
“You looked pretty good out there, treasure,” Cait chimed in, grinning in that typically lewd way of hers. “This rustbucket ever stops doin’ it for ya, I’m sure I know a couple of people more than willin’ to lend a hand.” Her arm hooked roughly around Mac’s neck to pull him into her side, and his cheeks went wildly red underneath the brim of his cap. Nick looked pointedly away.  
  
Nora rolled her eyes, still smirking. “Your mind ever leave the gutter, Cait?”  
  
“S’more fun down here,” she answered, with a lick of her lips.  
  
“Ain’t that the truth,” was Hancock’s addition, voice a little melodic with his heavy dose of painkillers. He was always some kind of high, but she’d never seen him venture far from his Mentats and Jet. It was almost cute, seeing him like this.  
  
“We gonna talk about the seriously scary Institute fu-- _guy_ or what?” Mac spoke up again, struggling to fight off his flush with a serious tone.  
  
The air in the room grew a little heavier. Nora chewed her lip. “I knew there had to be some left – they couldn’t have all been inside when the place went up. I just didn’t think they’d find Zimmer so fast.”  
  
“Y’think it was this Zimmer guy?” Cait’s tone was riddled with loyal hate, and the knuckles on her free hand squeezed until they delivered a satisfying crack.  
  
“Who else? They were after me. I mean, I’m the only known agent, right? What reason would they have to seek me out specifically?”  
  
“Revenge?” Mac suggested.  
  
“They’re not like that. It’s more like – the way Ayo picked them, the way he trained them. He made _sure_ they were more machine than people. They wouldn’t look for vengeance, they’d look for an organized group to tell them what to do.”  
  
“You said you thought Zimmer was farther west,” Hancock noted, strangely astute for his condition. But then, he battled through daily gunfights under highs stronger and longer than this. He could usually wrangle his thoughts in from any distance. “So how’d this guy get here so fast? He just – appeared.”  
  
“I think I might know someone who can answer that.” Deacon was resting his shoulder against the doorway, as though he had always been there, and all heads turned to face him. He held out his arms when Nora ran to him, and pulled her in immediately for a tight embrace. “Howdy, partner,” he breathed into her hair.  
  
“Howdy,” she answered, and there passed between them a wordless conversation. Nick did his best not to be bothered by it. And…he wasn’t, for the most part. Recent events had done well for his confidence.  
  
“Where were you?” Nora finally asked, pulling back enough to look up at him.  
  
“HQ. Thought maybe I could cool some heads while you were…busy.” His eyebrows waggled outlandishly above his sunglasses, and this earned him a rather firm punch in the front of his shoulder. “Ow! Hey. That’s assault, little lady.”  
  
“This is Goodneighbor. It’s probably encouraged.”  
  
“Damn near the law,” Hancock agreed behind her, and this allowed Nora to meet the agent in front of her with a satisfied _so-there_ expression.  
  
Deacon lifted his hands in defeat and delivered a dramatic sigh. “Such a barbaric person you’ve become.” But his arm was around her shoulders again, and she leaned against him comfortably. Nick watched his shoes carefully.  
  
“So what’s this answer?” Mac asked rather tersely, and for once Nick felt a little gratitude for the kid.  
  
“ _I_ don’t know,” Deacon explained, like that should be obvious. “Tinker Tom said a lot of gibberish about fluctuations in the thingy-whatever, and told me to come take a gander. And look what I find! You’re all partying without me.”  
  
“You got any idea what he’s thinking?” Nora prompted.  
  
“Maybe? He said something about teleportation, but I don’t know if I buy it. I was pretty sure that tech went out of business with the rest of the Institute.”  
  
“Was there ever any evidence they were established in force anywhere else?”  
  
Deacon shook his head, giving his partner’s shoulder a comforting little squeeze. “All signs pointed to the Commonwealth, as far as we knew. Dez is pulling her hair out over it.”  
  
“I can imagine.” Nora heaved a little sigh and broke away from Deacon, crossing her arms thoughtfully. “There’s not a lot of use in hashing it out right now. We all need rest, especially John. It’s been…an exciting day.”  
  
Hancock snickered and Cait joined in, though they were both met with a warning glare and eventually slipped back into silence.  
  
“Dr. Amari, do you think he’ll be okay to head out tomorrow?”  
  
The doctor met her stare with a look that clearly said she expected no better of any of them, and was somehow still disappointed. “If he _must_. He is healing well already with the stimpack, but there has been muscle damage.”  
  
“I’ll live,” Hancock waved her away, and Amari frowned.  
  
“How long before he’s back at one hundred percent?”  
  
“A few days at least. If he’s planning on using that shotgun of his, anyway.”  
  
“He is,” the room answered in unison, and Hancock guffawed happily.  
  
“Three days minimum, then.”  
  
Nora sighed, but when she met John’s eye she thought better than to suggest leaving him behind. He’d follow them anyway, and he’d be angry with her besides. He’d promised her before – to the ends of the earth and back. And he wasn’t going to let her force him to break his word.  
  
“Okay, then. We’ve got three days of vacation. Piper,” Nora added, turning toward her friend, “I know Ellie is probably—”  
  
“Like I’m gonna miss _this_ story,” Piper interrupted firmly. “Anyway, El’d give me hell if I came back without you two.” Nora’s smile was a little sad, but grateful, too.  
  
“Okay. John, you think you can send someone back to Diamond City with a message? Let Shaun and Ellie know we’ll be a little bit longer?”  
  
“You got it, Sunshine. I got just the guy.”  
  
“Good.” She heaved another little sigh, and found Nick’s hand lightly at the small of her back. Comfort warmed her, and she smiled up at him. “Looks like we’re paying the Railroad a visit.”  
  
“The whole gang back together?” Cait’s voice was pitched in the same way she greeted a fistfight: Eager and confident. “I like the sound of that.”  
  
“Hear, hear,” Deacon added, shooting Nora a surprisingly sincere smile.  
  
“Well you’re not all gonna head off and leave me behind,” Mac added grumpily, and Nora laughed.  
  
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Mac.”  
  
“Look out world,” Hancock added a little dreamily, “yer about to get a hard kick in the ass.”  
  
They laughed. Nick pulled Nora gently against his side, and she sighed in a kind of relief. If she really was going to have to face down the remains of the Institute, she couldn’t imagine a better team to have at her back.


	9. Your Universe and its Contents

I N T E R L U D E

 _  
  
  
  
  
I see you lookin’ ‘round the corner.  
Come on inside and pull up a chair._  
  
It was always like this. In the years prior, when most of their minds had been geared toward a large, noble cause, it was easier – they populated the same settlements and camps more often than not, and even in places as large and spread out as Sanctuary, they were pulled toward one another like magnets. Nick realized, perhaps before anyone else – or at least at the same time as Piper – that it was _her_. She was something bright and burning – a new and growing star, and they were all caught in orbit around her. It was warm there, and comfortable. Once you found yourself under the pull of Nora’s gravity, it was rare to want to leave it. She brought you in with open arms and a smart mouth. It was a deadly kind of combination.  
  
Nick and Nora were the first on Hancock’s more-or-less penthouse floor, creeping down from the attic stairs while trying to make themselves as unnoticeable as possible. To no avail, of course. John was sprawled lazily across one of his couches, completely ignoring the purpose of the sling he’d been dressed with. He was riding out a fresh hit of Jet as the pair descended into the room, and he released a low wolf-whistle in greeting. He got a double dose of glares for this, though no verbal scolding – he’d been the one to have that set of mattresses moved up into the tower for them, effectively allowing them the most privacy Goodneighbor had to offer.  
  
Nora paid him back in kind by shoving his legs unceremoniously off the cushions as she passed, garnering an outlandish pout in response. She took up the place where the mayor’s boots had been resting, and pulled Nick down beside her. Here, she sandwiched herself, tossing her legs over Hancock’s lap and looping Nick’s arm around her so she could rest her back comfortably against his side.  
  
John took advantage of the moment to pucker his lips in order to smack a few kissy-sounds at the two, which earned him a nudge of Nora’s heel into his leg. Cait was chuckling from the doorway, and obediently entered fully when Nora beckoned. She flopped onto the opposite couch just as Piper entered from another doorway, face thick with sleep and mouth opened in a wide yawn. Cait was quick to pat the open seat next to her with an outlandishly seductive look, and Piper groaned even as she dropped into place and Cait threw an arm around her shoulders.  
  
They hadn’t been breaking morning conversation long before a baggy-eyed MacCready came stomping up the stairs. Cait was quick to wrangle him in against her other side, and it wasn’t long before the group was trading laughs and cigarettes. Deacon appeared soon after, like he always did, as if by magic. It was always like this. They pulled together like magnets.  
  
And when silence inevitably chased the tail of chatter, they listened to the radio.  
  
  
  
  
_No need to feel like a stranger,  
‘cause we’re all a little strange in here._  
  
Between shots fired, they listen to the radio. It’s jazzy and just distracting enough to fill the silence without pulling their attention too far away from task.  
  
It’s the first time she’s handled a rifle, and its bulk surprises her. Everyone always made it look so easy to lug such a long gun around everywhere. MacCready can’t help but laugh a little when she nearly tips forward. She huffs, but she’s too determined – or too stubborn – to let it scare her off.  
  
“Okay, okay, you don’t have to swing it so hard. It’s not a sword. A rifle’s all about distance, you know? Means you can afford to take your time. You’ve already got your pistol if you have to fight up close.”  
  
“Knife, too.”  
  
“No sh—really? You good with it?”  
  
“I’m learning.”  
  
“From who?”  
  
“Are you teaching me to shoot or are we playing twenty questions?”  
  
“Fine, fine.” He helps her lift the end of the rifle up to a more proper angle, shows her how to use the sights, presses the stock into her shoulder and shows her how to bend her arm to open up that cup of muscle to bear the brunt of the kick.  
  
Even with this preparation, and Mac’s surprisingly effective way of explaining, she isn’t braced enough. At the end of street where they have set up the range, she takes aim at a target. She remembers “squeeze not pull” as her finger curls around the trigger. She lets out a breath to steady the bobbing barrel along the straight line of her vision. When the shot fires, she’s on her back before she can process the event. Somewhere behind them, Cait is cackling while Nick and Hancock are drawing forward with voices full of concern – though John’s also brings with it a hefty amount of amusement.  
  
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Nora insists, as she rolls to her feet, blinking dizzily and palming the shoulder against which the stock had jerked. She could feel the bruise already, frowning at the tenderness of the area. “I don’t know what I was expecting.”  
  
Mac, after helping her up, can’t shake a little smile. “Hey, don’t worry about it. First time I fired a gun it hit me in the face and I didn’t come to for a couple of hours.”  
  
“How old were you?”  
  
“Seven,” he admits, and she groans.  
  
“Great, so my skills are on-par with a post-apocalyptic adolescent.”  
  
“First try’s always the hardest!” This is Hancock’s rasping voice, his hands bracing the backs of her shoulders with a fond little squeeze – which he immediately releases when she curls toward her bruised shoulder with a little hiss of pain.  
  
“You all right there?” Nick is eyeing that shoulder with concern, and she offers him what she hopes is a reassuring smile.  
  
“Gotta get used to it, is all.”  
  
“Look on the bright side,” Mac announces, gently turning her to face the painted targets cobbled together out of broken furniture. “Your aim’s still good.”  
  
“Now all I need is to make sure it’s always a headshot and I’ve got a soft place to land.”  
  
Cait is with them now, and she’s grinning. “A soft place, eh? Got a few I can recommend.”  
  
“Cait!” Nora is smiling under a rising blush, and giving a little shove to Cait’s nearest arm. She takes it well, and throws an arm roughly around Nora’s shoulders. “C’mon, Pres says dinner’s on.”  
  
“Preston’s cooking?” Mac doesn’t even try to hide the disappointment in his voice – and it carries down the block to the pot over which Preston Garvey is keeping watch.  
  
“You’re free to go without, Mac,” Preston calls across to them, and the group is laughing good-naturedly by the time they reach the circle in the street where they had all, without convening, apparently decided would be the standard place for meals.  
  
They settle in approximately their usual places, Mac making a small show of cleaning both his and Nora’s new rifle before slinging them both over his back. She reaches down to give his shoulder a thankful little squeeze, and Nick is sure he’s not the only one to notice the secret little smile that lights up on the kid’s face.  
  
He’s _doubly_ sure when Deacon takes this convenient moment to appear at Nora’s side, ruffling her hair before plopping down on the ground beside her. “Howdy, partner.”  
  
“Howdy,” she answers in kind, and doesn’t notice the glower instating itself on MacCready’s face at Deacon filling the gap between himself and Nora.  
  
They hand out plates and bent silverware, exchange jokes and observations on Nora’s budding new skill. Curie fusses at the darkening bruise on the woman’s shoulder, and Codsworth busies himself by topping up drinks and offering second servings.  
  
Nora reaches over after a while to fish into Nick’s nearest pocket, and from his place on a stool beside her, he rolls his eyes with a chuckle. “Anyone ever tell you you’d make a terrible pickpocket?”  
  
“There go my dreams of an illustrious life of crime. Where are your cigarettes?”  
  
“Maybe I’m keepin’ ‘em hidden ‘cause _someone_ isn’t very good at keeping her hands to herself.”  
  
Nora pouts, pulling her fingers out of his pocket and making grabby-hands gestures with just the one hand, given the plate she supports in the other. “Sharing is caring, Valentine.”  
  
He shakes his head and reaches into the opposite side of his coat, pulling a pack from an interior pocket and shaking a cigarette loose for her. She takes it gratefully and pins it between her lips before leaning forward a little expectantly, coaxing another hopeless laugh out of him before he retrieves his lighter and provides her with a little spark of flame.  
  
From the other side of the circle, Hancock watches this exchange with a faint smile tugging at the scars on his face. Piper is also observing at his side, and they catch each other’s eyes briefly. They aren’t exactly _friends_ , but Nora has a way of uniting people in spite of their previously established tensions.  
  
“Think they’ll ever officially get their shit together?” His voice is quiet, and he’s leaning over just slightly.  
  
She tries to hide it, but Piper smiles. “Those two?” She ponders this briefly over a bite of food, and eventually sighs almost wistfully. “Who knows? That’s a lot of baggage to pick through.”  
  
“You ain’t kiddin’.” Hancock chews on the end of his fork for a few moments, apparently drifting into thought. “You ever seen Valentine with a girl before?”  
  
“Nick?” Piper chokes on a laugh, glancing between Nora and Nick with a crooked kind of grin. “Other than Ellie – I don’t think so.”  
  
“He look at Ellie like that?”  
  
And for the first time, Piper _really_ observes. She considers that she might be too close to the both of them to have really considered or seen it before. Not to mention, her vision might be a little clouded when it comes to a certain secretary – not that she’d ever let that slip, especially around Hancock. But now, with the two of them laughing quietly with each other, she can see…something. Nora has always been as open as she can be – even in the immediate wake of her loss and heartache, Piper has watched her fight to keep that softness. Nick is not so different, though he has had more time to be boiled hard by the Commonwealth, and for as much as he cares about the nebulous Greater Good, Piper can’t remember him ever leaving himself open to another person so…easily. He’s honest to a fault, but he’s always guarded. With Nora, his smile is quicker, his laughter more frequent. And Piper thinks she can see it now.  
  
“Thought so,” Hancock interrupts her thoughts, watching the realization really dawn on the reporter’s face. “Got it bad, huh?”  
  
“Aw, jeeze.”  
  
“You said it.”  
  
“You’re good friends with Nora, huh?”  
  
“I like to think we’re pretty close.”  
  
“What do _you_ think?”  
  
“I think…” He fumbles in his pocket and she can hear the tapping of tablets in a tin before he sets a small, white disc on his tongue. “I think we’re in for a good, long show.”  
  
Among the sounds of forks clinking against plates, little pockets of laughter erupting and spreading, Nora attempting to hold the entirety of Nick’s package of cigarette hostage, the group as a whole settles. When they lapse into the quiet of a meal being enjoyed, they listen to the radio.  
  
  
  
_Have you got a history that needs erasing?  
Did you come in just for the beer and cigarettes?  
A broken down dream you’re tired of chasing?  
Oh, well I’m just the girl to make you forget.  
_  
  
Nick doesn’t have much of a soft spot for Goodneighbor as a whole, but he can’t say he dislikes the Third Rail. He’s here ostensibly to soak in the jazz and smoke in his single seat in the corner, but if anyone was to watch him too closely, they’d see his eyes drifting back to and lingering on the couple near the bar now and again.  
  
Slightly short, brown woman in a gaudy sort of dress that clings in all the right places – and all the wrong places, depending on who was doing the looking. Nick tries not to let that line of thinking hold any sway in his mind. The man pressing into her side is medium in every sense of the work – height, build, demeanor. Everything about him is strategically average. But he is well decorated – so much so that the decoration is almost all anyone would be able to remember about him, if for some reason they were asked to describe him later. Dirty and worn greaser jacket, dark sunglasses, pompadour combed back with practice, holes in his jeans that would seem to indicate relatively recent roughhousing.  
  
Their act is impeccable. If he didn’t already know, he might not have thought to look twice. As it stands, he watches them briefly and casually, leaning back in his chair and flicking the ash of his cigarette into an old ashtray on the small table periodically.  
  
The woman who Nora is pretending to be lets out a wild laugh, presses painted lips sloppily against the cheek of the man whose identity Deacon has adopted. Nick very purposefully ignores the little surge this stirs in him and lets his gaze wander off to the left, where Magnolia practically purrs a tune into the microphone.  
  
The rather nondescript man over which the incognito couple have been hovering eventually hobbles out of his barstool and drifts toward and ultimately up the stairs. The covert pair exchange a meaningful glance and, Nick chuckles as he realizes, play a discreet and fast game of roshambo which The-Man-Who-Is-Not-Deacon loses poorly. Before he makes his own exist, he pulls Not-Quite-Nora in by the waist and kisses the corner of her mouth with all the grace of the well and truly drunk and stupid. It’s a good act; Nick might have even been convinced if he wasn’t all too privy to the plan.  
  
When Anonymous Boorish Drunk is up the stairs and out of sight, Equally Anonymous Loose Skirt is making her way toward Nick’s table, a little more wobbly on her feet than she realistically should be. He knows her way of being tipsy, knows there’s some acting there – but also knows it’s not the whole of it. She’s made a rookie mistake of imbibing a little too honestly in an attempt to convince others, and he wonders briefly if Deacon didn’t take the dive in their little game on purpose. Deacon was a pro at drinking without actually drinking if there ever was one.  
  
“Say,” she drawls, and it’s not quite her voice, just like the blonde wig isn’t quite her hair and that tight, almost silly dress isn’t quite her style. “Ain’t you that Valentine fella?”  
  
It’s a game. The look in her eyes is a little challenge. She’s having _fun_. She does this sometimes on their own cases, too, when discretion proves more useful than not. Never quite as deep into character, but just as eager to pull him into the pretend. He’s here more or less to act as backup if the need arrives, and he’s found that their prey is far less than a job for two agents. His information may not even be good enough for one.  
  
And really, it’s Deacon’s problem now. And Nick can afford a little leisure, he supposes.  
  
“Say that I am,” he answers, taking another drag of smoke, “what’s your interest?”  
  
“I hear you’re quite the clockwork dick.”  
  
He can’t hold back the scoff of a laugh. “Prefer _synth detective_ , if it’s all the same to you. Might be that’s true. You after a detective?”  
  
“I got a bit of a mystery needs solving. I hear you’re good at that.”  
  
“You hear a lot, miss…”  
  
“Spade,” she supplies easily, and a smile is abrupt on his face.  
  
“’Course.”  
  
“Lot gets said about you. A girl can’t help but hear.”  
  
“No wonder my ears have been burning. You believe everything you hear?”  
  
Miss-Spade-nee-Nora is grinning in a way that’s far too inviting. It’s a typical reaction when he goes along with her antics, and he can’t say he’s sorry to see it. Her smile has been harder to find of late – he can see the weight that playing double agent for the Institute puts on her. She usually doesn’t take so many Railroad jobs in a row. She’s keeping busy while keeping close to the source. It’s part of why he’s here – and part, he’s sure, of why she’s a little more drunk than she should be.  
  
“I’m more an actions over words kinda gal. Words are fancy and fun but they don’t hold up when your back’s against the wall.”  
  
“Sounds like sage advice. Who told you that?”  
  
“A mechanical man told me, once.”  
  
Nick’s grin is impossible to fight down, so he glances off to the stage again, nursing the glow of his cigarette into life. “So what’s this mystery you’ve got for me?”  
  
She’s scooting around the small, round table until he can feel her hip on his shoulder and she’s blocking out the sight of Magnolia altogether. “See, I know a girl.”  
  
“Always starts with a dame, don’t it?”  
  
“You don’t know the half of it,” she answers, reaching down to pluck that cigarette right out of his lips and seize it between her own. He’s only a little shocked by the forwardness of it – it’s not uncommon for them to share a cigarette, and not at all uncommon for her to steal one from him, but there’s a kind of…weight to this gesture, this time. He hasn’t really seen her act so purposefully…sultry before.  
  
“No?” Is all he can think to say, and any hope of following this up with a more coherent sentiment is dashed when she slides around easily into his lap.  
  
“See, she doesn’t really like herself anymore. Feels like she’s lost herself, maybe. Word is missing persons are your specialty. That sound like a case you can solve?”  
  
The smile in his face fades even as hers does, and he braces an instinctively comforting palm against her back. “That sounds…like a tough one.”  
  
“Don’t it just.”  
  
“I’ve solved more with less.”  
  
“That must be what makes you so highly recommended.” She tilts towards him slightly until her face is more or less in the cradle of his shoulder, and Nick feels something about her go cold – empty, maybe. He’s at a loss until she speaks again, and his arm curls a little tighter around her.  
  
“Can you take me home, Mr. Valentine? I’m very tired.”  
  
“Sure, doll.” And he’s lifting her to her feet gingerly, steering her towards the stairs and bearing the brunt of her weight.  
  
They catch a caravan on the way out in the morning. She leans against him nearly the whole way, the color almost gone out of her. A woman turns a dial on a little box tied to the side of her Brahmin’s packs. While they make their way back to Diamond City in relative silence, they listen to the radio.  
  
  
  
  
_So we’re glad you dropped by,  
come in and loosen up your tie.  
Have a drink or maybe just one more.  
  
_ “Boss.”  
  
The gruff voice announced the ghoul’s presence in the room, but it was the recognition of it that caused Nora’s head to shoot up. Upon laying eyes on that familiar, scarred face – as always, tucked neatly under his short-billed cap – her face lit up with a grin.  
  
“Deegan!”  
  
She unfolded herself from her comfortable cradle between Nick and Hancock in order to rush over to the man, and he greeted her with open arms so that she might wrap her arms about him. He was a tall figure, even had an inch or two on Nick, and he was generally broad. He practically dwarfed Nora in their embrace, and his greeting chuckle rumbled through his whole body like the warning tremor of an earthquake.  
  
“Hey, doll,” he rasped, pleased in that quiet way of his. “You went dark a while. Worried maybe you wouldn’t be back.”  
  
“And walk out on you? No such luck, pal.”  
  
Deegan chuckled again, though he looked over her head to Hancock, and Nora, realizing she had come between a mayor and some official business, turned to stand at Deegan’s side, following his gaze to his employer. John, for his part, was simply grinning, reveling in the little surprise of joy he could facilitate.  
  
“Y’get the job done?” Before Deegan could answer, Hancock was already shaking his head. “’Course ya did, ain’t even gotta ask.”  
  
“Got some stragglers from the city. Say they have a surprise for your lady.”  
  
_Your lady_. Nick was having a hard time adjusting to this whole ‘jealousy’ concept. Not that he hadn’t felt it before, but it hadn’t felt so righteous previously. He groused and fished out a cigarette, and pointedly ignored the knowing grin Hancock was aiming at him.  
  
“Well send ‘em in.”  
  
Deegan took a step toward the stairway twisting through the floor and nodded down at someone unseen. A shuffle of quick feet preceded the woman’s presence in the room, her short hair mussed from the sudden rush. And then a grin was splitting her small face, and she was clinging to Nora with enough pressure in her delicate arms to merit a breathless cough from her prisoner.  
  
“Mon dieu! It is true! We ‘ave been so very worried! ‘Ow irresponsible, disappearing like that. Are you injured?” Curie’s words came out in a cluttered rush, and Nora couldn’t help but laugh, trying to unpin her arms enough to return the desperate hug.  
  
“It’s good to see you, Curie.”  
  
Curie pulled back only enough to give Nora a good once-over, fussing as much as she ever had. But Nora’s attention was stolen by the figure trudging up the stairs behind her friend, adjusting his familiar hat and shouldering that laser musket.  
  
“Preston!” She was in the man’s arm in an instant, and he pulled her against his side with his free hand. “How did you two—”  
  
“Word got up to the Castle you’d been spotted heading into Diamond City. We headed down to check it out and ran into Deegan on his way out.” It shouldn’t have been such a surprise how gentle Preston was, how immediately forgiving. But it made her eyes swim with grateful tears just the same.  
  
“I’m so sorry I—”  
  
“We’re just glad you’re okay.” The minuteman smiled earnestly, and for the first time she noticed the rather fresh looking strip of a scar that ran down the center of his temple and ended at his chin.  
  
“Oh, Pres.” Nora lifted a hand to let her fingertips just barely brush that healing wound, frown pinching her expression. “How did you get _this_?”  
  
He laughed with a quiet good nature that was so singularly his, and reached up to gingerly take her hand into the padding of his free glove. “Raiders wanted to tangle with the Castle. We held up.”  
  
“I should have been there,” Nora whispered, letting Preston carry her hand down to his chest, where he gave it a comforting little squeeze.  
  
“We held up,” he repeated, “didn’t lose a man. Just scrapes and bruises. Anyway,” he added, finally releasing her hand and adopting a slightly brighter tone, “you’re retired. General had things handled. She sends her regards, by the way.”  
  
“I’m betting Glory put it a lot more colorfully than that.”  
  
Preston laughed almost shyly, taking a small step back to open himself to the room at large, and the company therein. “I might be paraphrasing.” He leaned to one side just enough to get a look at everyone behind Nora, friendly smile falling easily into place. “Got the whole gang together, I see.”  
  
“Ain’t a party without _you_ , Pres,” Cait practically cooed, and Mac crossed his arms a little childishly, still under the rough hold of her arm.  
  
“Cait,” Preston greeted simply, with a tip of his hat.  
  
“C’mooon,” Hancock chimed in again, beckoning the newly arrived group over with an outlandish beckoning arc of his arm, “have a seat, stay a while.”  
  
“Monsieur ‘Ancock! Your arm!” Curie was at once at his side, fretting in her amiable, innocent kind of way.  
  
“We do have one more surprise,” Preston announced, nodding in Nora’s direction.  
  
“I don’t know how much more I can take,” she teased, winding her way back to her spot on the couch, though given that Hancock was trying his best to fight off his new nurse as gingerly as he possibly could, Nora simply tucked up comfortably under Nick’s arm, immediately snatching his cigarette out of his mouth. He simply sighed, letting his hand cup her opposite shoulder affectionately.  
  
“I don’t think he’d forgive us if we left him behind.” If Preston noticed anything out of the ordinary between the pair on the sofa, he resolutely didn’t mention it. Instead, he tucked his lower lip under his upper teeth and let out a quick, shrill whistle.  
  
A happy bark echoed up the stairs, followed very quickly by a galloping, panting block of muscle and fur. Nora had barely enough time to shout “Dogmeat!” before the animal was on her, climbing over hers and Nick’s laps in order to lick at her cheeks. She was helpless with laughter, scratching her fingers into familiar, pleasurable spots on either side of the dog’s neck. Hancock was laughing, too, reaching out to scratch behind an ear. Nick simply smiled, watching Dogmeat reunite with Nora with more fervor than perhaps any of them had.  
  
Preston settled himself in a chair, Curie made it her duty to adjust Hancock’s sling, and while dog and master reacquainted themselves, they listened to the radio. _  
  
  
  
  
But if you’re searching for something  
to bring you comfort,  
oh, well, I’m the one you’re looking for.  
  
_ “Non, non, zis is not ze proper use of a stimpack. ‘Ealing is best facilitated by injecting below a bleeding wound. See? Zis extended scarring would not be such an issue if a stimpack 'ad been applied properly.”  
  
Nora issues a gruff laugh as the small woman hovers and frets over her, though Piper responds with a groaning kind of sigh. “Not a lotta time to care about scars when a bloodbug’s sucking out your insides, Curie.”  
  
“Zat is not what bloodbugs do.”  
  
“Figure of speech,” Piper rolls her eyes, “is she gonna be okay?”  
  
“I’ll be fine,” Nora insists, and the blood pouring freely from the circular wound in her shoulder is slowing even as she speaks. The heat of the injection site to the far side of the slowly-knitting skin still pulses, and she tries to focus on that instead of the strange sensation of muscle and flesh pulling itself together far more quickly than nature intended.  
  
“General!”  
  
Preston is hustling down the hill, musket in hand, and Dogmeat is whining hot on his heels.  
  
“Cavalry’s here,” Nora groans with a half-smile, sitting up a little more and pulling her sticky hand from her shoulder, blood already drying.  
  
“General, are you all right?”  
  
“Relax, all of you.” She struggles to her feet, and Piper’s hands are at her back to steady her. Curie huffs and fusses, dabbing at the nearly-sealed wound and frowning in an almost motherly disapproval. “It’s just a mosquito bite.” She laughs a little bitterly at this, and the gathering group fixes her with questioning looks.  
  
“Mosquitos?” Nora supplies again, reaching down to comfort a whining Dogmeat with a gentle scratch to his head. “You know, what bloodbugs evolved from? They were really tiny back in the day.” To illustrate, she holds up her bloodied hand with thumb and forefinger nearly touching.  
  
They look at the space between her fingers, and then each other. “You didn’t hit your head, Blue, didja?”  
  
“I’m serious!” She gently brushes Curie away, wipes what blood she can from her hand onto her jeans, and finally holsters the pistol that had fallen to the ground moments before. Dogmeat noses into her leg with a whine, and she crouches down to reassure him with fingers massaging his neck and a brief kiss on his wet nose. “I’m fine boy, see?”  
  
“I thought we’d cleared them out yesterday,” Preston notes, looking up the hill questioningly to a small group of minutemen who have gathered there to peer down at the scene.  
  
“It’s my fault,” Nora answers, standing straight again and giving her injured shoulder a tentative roll. “Heard a buzz in the bushes, thought it was a bloatfly – went in cocky.” Her attempt at a comforting smile is met with mixed disapproval, and she sighs. She knows their concern comes from a good place – knows that she loves them for it, with all that she has. But ever since she had agreed to Dez’s double-agent plan, everyone has begun to treat her like something…fragile. She hasn’t even gone _in_ yet, Tom is still hashing out Virgil’s plans.  
  
But now they act like she can only be handled with kid gloves. Like she’s more a rare commodity than a friend. It comes from a good place, she knows – reminds herself of this often – but she hates the way it makes her feel. _Frozen banana_ , she thinks, smirking at the recollection. Something that should be in a glass case on some high shelf.  
  
“I’m going up to the farm,” she announces, already beginning her trek up the hill. “Aren’t I supposed to be learning about crop rotations or whatever?” It’s supposed to be true – she _wants_ it to be true. Nora has been lending Preston a personal hand in the establishment of settlements so she can learn the land, the people, the way to survive – so she can absorb the way of life that takes you over out here. So she won’t be an outsider to the people who have begun to look up to her.  
  
She puts off _that_ thought before she gets nauseous again. She doesn’t really know how to feel about being some kind of…what? Idol? Celebrity?  
  
Nora leaves the trio to argue quietly about her well-being among themselves, and she crests the top of the hill with Dogmeat barking happily at her side. This settlement is small, home as of yet to a few minutemen and a single family. She likes that about it, really. The Castle is as large and crowded as one can imagine, and most settlements allied with the minutemen were self-sufficient before they were taken under the General’s protection. She learns from them, too, but there’s rarely anything hands-on to be done. Not that she minds, per se. She gets the best stories from those settlements.  
  
She rounds the back of the slightly drooping, two-story shack that houses the farm’s occupants, and the sight that greets her there brings a funny smile to her face. Good ol’ Nick. He comes with her almost everywhere now – she barely needs to ask. He’s bordering on Deacon-levels of silent understanding, and she can shoot him a look across a crowded room and he’ll already be packed, already ready to travel. It’s comforting. It feels…safe.  
  
This, though. This is new. Nick has shucked his coat – it’s summer, and he still carries the damn thing; she can’t help but laugh – and is making a go of tilling the soil, rusty hoe in hand and sleeves rolled up. It’s a good look for him. He’s never one to shy away from work, Nora knows that, but they so rarely have to involve themselves in anything even resembling farming. But true to the kind of man he wants to be, he hacks at the earth, grumbling a little, but looking determined.  
  
Leaning against a fence post that marks part of the border of the small patch of fertile ground, Nora indulges herself in the moment – in watching him work, in watching the metal slightly exposed in his arm and free to the air where a hand should be tighten and bend ever so slightly with the force of his task. She’s met good men before. Hell, she married one. But there’s a kind of goodness in Nick that seems…almost out of place. Otherworldly. Old-worldly, perhaps. It reminds her of home.  
  
“I feel like I should get you a glass of lemonade and tell you the cows need milking.” Nora is grinning when he looks up at her, seeing her for the first time, and she takes a little more enjoyment than she probably should in watching his expression fight between general annoyance and that kind of put-upon amusement he wears whenever she gets wise.  
  
“Wouldn’t say no,” is his answer as he stands straight, striking the hoe into the ground so it, too, can stand on its own. “But I’m not touching any sensitive parts of a Brahmin.”  
  
She laughs, and crosses the distance to him until they’re close enough that Dogmeat can run happy little circles around them, occasionally stopping to demand petting from one or the other. “Not even if I ask nice?”  
  
“For _you_ ,” Nick considers, using an arm to support some of his weight against the farm tool in a small lean, “depends on how nice.” He looks from her face to her shoulder and stiffens a little, and she heaves a sigh before he can even ask her about it.  
  
“Please, not you too. I’m fine. It’s just messy-looking.”  
  
“What makes you so sure I was gonna ask about you?” The thin lines of his brows rise in mild challenge, and all at once she’s grinning again.  
  
“Not concerned, Valentine?”  
  
“Wondering if we shouldn’t be informing that bug’s next of kin.”  
  
“Aw, you do care.” But she’s laughing lightly, and he matches her with a chuckle of his own. She stretches her arms up gingerly, mindful of her still-sore shoulder, and Nick very much does _not_ look at the little line of skin this gesture exposes at her belly. He doesn’t care about that sort of thing, he reminds himself. He _doesn’t_. And he refuses to wonder why, lately, he needs to _keep_ reminding himself of it.  
  
“I’m going down to the creek, get washed up a bit. You wanna play hooky with me?”  
  
“You got any Rad-X?”  
  
This makes her laugh, though she rolls her eyes as she starts past him, meandering easily in the direction of the small river a few yards down the opposite side of the hill. “I’m sure _you_ do, old man.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” he mutters, grabbing his coat off the fence with a rattle of pocketed pills, “you’re not wrong.”  
  
Preston and Piper let their eyes follow the pair as they drift out of site. The minuteman looks almost…uncomfortable as he shifts around to face her, and Piper quirks a brow, leaning against the outer wall of the shack. “Something up, Pres?”  
  
He reaches up to rub the back of his neck in a nervous sort of gesture, shouldering his musket with his other arm. “Are they…” He doesn’t quite know how to finish, and Piper’s not merciful enough to give it to him that easily. She lets him squirm a little.  
  
“Are theyyyy…what? Escaping? A secret comedy duo? Organ donors?”  
  
“Piper.” Preston tries for an admonishing tone, but the best he can get is somewhere around pleading. Finally, Piper laughs.  
  
“Why? You jealous?”  
  
“No,” he answers so steadily that she knows it’s true. His shyness on that front isn’t present. This would probably have been a better tactic to take with MacCready, she considers. “It’s just – if they _are_ …”  
  
“There some sort of problem if they _are_ significant-pause?”  
  
“Not from me. General deserves to be happy.” There’s a kind of sadness in his expression that gives Piper pause. “But – a lot is depending on her. If people knew the General had taken up with a synth – while she’s this close to the Institute already? I’m not sure it would do either of their reputations any good.”  
  
She frowns at this, but she has to consider his point. Because it’s true. The general masses of the Commonwealth would love to band together behind a betrayal story as juicy as that, and a sudden pang for both of her friends hits her. They have already both endured so much, and the future only promises more.  
  
“I think they know that,” Piper answers at last, with a sad little sigh. “I think it bothers both of them.” She lets out a hollow little laugh at that. “How’s that for a story? Two lost people find each other in all this –” she gestures with her arms to the world at large “—and they can’t even admit it, ‘cause they care too much to let the other suffer. Would be sickeningly romantic if they weren’t our friends.”  
  
“Maybe…” Preston is visibly trying to see the bright side, and he struggles for a moment. “Maybe, eventually, it won’t matter? If the General can really take down the Institute from the inside, they’ll both be a little freer.”  
  
She smiles at the attempt, pinching her shoulders in a shrug. “How long is too long to wait, you know? You feel that way about somebody, and waiting just gets…” Piper sighs with such honesty that it catches Preston’s attention, though he keeps himself quiet for the moment. “You end up trying to hate them, so it doesn’t feel so bad. But it still does, only now you both resent each other. That kind of thing – that can rot through a friendship.”  
  
“You know,” Preston begins, the picture of innocence, “there’s nothing like that really stopping you and Elli—”  
  
“Whoa-ho there cowboy,” Piper warns, throwing up her hands in a very clear _stop-right-there_ gesture, “little more minding your own business, if you please.” She tries to smile, and he chuckles, bracing a hand briefly against her shoulder before beckoning her along with a jerk of his head. “Come on. We’ll have to move out soon. Better get the General.”  
  
When they gather at the farm again and accept the family’s offer for dinner, everyone lapses into a kind of thoughtful silence. The wife of the household lets jazz drift out gently from the doorway to the circle of guests around the cooking pot. Chewing and thinking, they listen to the radio.

 

  
  
_Now is your motor running close to empty?  
Or are you runnin’ from yourself?  
  
_ Sanctuary is relatively quiet in the early morning. Codsworth hovers around slowly, occasionally clipping a shrub or tidying an area of the broken street. Nick haunts the perimeter like a derelict ghost, stopping every now and then to take advantage of the free time to run a diagnostic. Neither Nora nor Hancock have ever been very good sleeps, and their handful of hours of rest have both run their course. They convene eventually in the street where Mac’s target range now boasts several dozen precise, centered shots. Hancock takes a moment to examine one particular bullseye with the tip of his finger, releasing a low whistle.  
  
“I’m impressed, sister. Ya catch on quick.”  
  
“That’s the idea,” she laughs, turning to walk backwards in front of him for a few steps, “that’s why we’re out here, right?”  
  
He nods in a retired kind of agreement, a hand deftly and quietly retrieving his combat knife as though from thin air. “Yeah,” he answers, spinning the blade idly between his fingers. “Still think it’d be better t’show ya on a body.”  
  
Nora makes a face. “The dummy works just fine.”  
  
“It’s made’a blankets.”  
  
“Less mess.” She’s smiling in challenge now, and he matches her with one of his own.  
  
“You remember last time?” He’s already digging behind the barricade of painted targets to retrieve the approximately human-shaped bundle of blankets and dirty cloth.  
  
“Throat, ribs, belly,” she recites like a well-trained pupil.  
  
Hancock nods, propping the dummy on the leg of a stacked, upturned chair, so that it more or less ‘stands.’ “If ya wanna put ‘em on their ass?”  
  
“Arteries.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
“Upper arms, thighs, knees if I can get ‘em.”  
  
“That’s my girl,” John pronounces proudly, bracing her nearest shoulder with a squeeze of his hand. Then he adopts a slightly hunched stance at her sides, knees bent just so, knife hand drawn back near his hip and opposite arm held up in preparation for a block. Immediately, Nora mimics his position, positioning herself in front of the target dummy – who is already boasting a few rips and tears.  
  
“Blunt weapon,” the ghoul instructs, “comin’ atcha with his right hand.”  
  
Nora’s left arm is lifted in an instant, the knife in her fist arcing upward into the abdomen of the cloth-man.  
  
“Bladed weapon, same hand,” Hancock barks, establishing a quick pace between drills, “atcher ribs.”  
  
She ducks low, drags her little switchblade through a blanket-stuffed thigh, then drives her free hand straight up to connect with a place a nose would occupy on a person of flesh and blood. He smirks at that. Teach her all he might, she still adds her own little flair. She’s got good instincts; he can definitely give her that.  
  
He calls another drill, she thrusts the knife again.  
  
From his place leaning against the wall of a house at the end of the cul-de-sac, Nick watches. His face is mostly impassive in the orange glow of his morning cigarette. She’s getting good, he can see that. She can already hold her own well enough, and if she keeps training as hard as she has – she’ll be a force. He doesn’t really know how he feels about that.  
  
Rationally, it’s good. She’s arming herself against a world that has it out for her. She’s learning how to survive. Personally…well, he supposes he doesn’t really have a right to have a personal opinion on it all. But that didn’t stop the worry. In a secret, inner pocket of his metaphorical heart, he fears that her evolution will dull the – the _softness_ about her. That kindness that radiates off her even when she’s under the thumb of real suffering. It’s hard for anything shiny not to get scuffed up and worn down in the Commonwealth. There isn’t a lot of solid good left. But Nora? Nora is _good_. Plain, pure and simple. She has a sense of honor, and it makes it difficult for her to navigate the modern world. But it makes her so rare, so – important.  
  
Nick doesn’t want to see that fade. Ultimately it’s not up to him, and he knows it, but he also knows right down to his core processor that he can’t _not_ try and preserve it – preserve her. The whole of her. So he watches, not for the first time, as Hancock takes her through his fast-paced lessons, and he watches as she keeps up barely a breath behind. She _is_ getting good. Much as that worries him, he lets it impress him, too.  
  
It’s close to two hours later when the pair in the street call it quits – and it’s more at Hancock’s insistence than it is Nora’s choice. She insists she’s ready for more, but John notes the settlement will be waking up soon, and she’s gone red in the face with sweat and effort. She calls him something inappropriate and teasing, and the mayor dips in close to her side and does something unseen with his hand that makes her squeal and then giggle. He laughs, kicks the dummy back into its place at the back of the long-range targets, and heads off to chase the morning’s exertions with a quick high.  
  
Nora has her switchblade back into the pocket of her jeans, and pulls her tank away from her chest a few times to get a little air against her skin. When she glances off to the side, she spots Nick and grins, and he raises a hand in greeting. She jogs over to him lazily, and in typical fashion, she has him by the wrist in an instant and tucks herself under his arm. Out of some kind of habit, he passes her his current cigarette, and she takes a grateful drag.  
  
“You don’t half smell like a gym sock,” Nick notes, a little smile curling onto his lips.  
  
“What, you don’t find a sweaty woman sexy?”  
  
It’s such an easy, natural jab for her, and he does his best not to bodily react. Because no, no, no he _doesn’t_. He _can’t_.  
  
“I find her aroma pungent.”  
  
“Says the man who smells like the inside of a Mister Handy fuel tank.”  
  
“Hey, don’t knock that stuff,” he chides, plucking the cigarette out of her fingers, “it’s good stuff if you can find a decent year.”  
  
She makes a face and he chuckles, and they settle into silence. From the window of the house against which they lean, someone turns on a little jazz for their morning routine, and Nora hums along briefly.  
  
“Nick?”  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“Do you think you have a soul?” And there it is. Her soft little voice like an ice-cold smack to a sleeping face.  
  
“What kinda question is that to spring on a guy?”  
  
“A…philosophic one?”  
  
He can’t help another chuckle, and while he considers this, she steals his cigarette back and rests her head against him. He eyes her down his nose curiously, absently rubbing his thumb against the bulb of her opposite shoulder.  
  
“I don’t know how much I go in for the afterlife gambit,” he admits at last.  
  
“Well, I think you do,” Nora replies sternly, taking another pull of smoke and letting it drift out in a cloud. “Have a soul, I mean.”  
  
“I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.” He shrugs.  
  
“I find the idea of some kind of… _after_ – comforting.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“It’s why you’ve got to have a soul, see?”  
  
“Why’s that?”  
  
Gingerly, she pulls out from under the weight of his arm and drops the nearly-dead cigarette to the ground, where she snuffs out its last remnant of flame with a twist of her ankle and toes of her shoe firmly planted on the little cylinder. “Because,” she explains simply, “I like the idea of some kind of after, but I don’t think I’d like it if I couldn’t count on meeting you there.”  
  
And then she is off and away, so easy and simple, and Nick Valentine is undone. In the general quiet of morning, jazz continues to play little tunes around the block. All waking and preparing for the day, they listen to the radio.  
  
  
  
  
_You’re thirsty for a brand new kind of pleasure?  
Or are you hungry to be somebody else?  
  
_ “So are you gonna tell me why we’ve got to tail _him_ of all people?”  
  
“Because _you_ , my delicate young protégé, are getting cocky. And his senses are off the charts compared to any human.” Deacon grins. Currently, he’s Victor – a name she chose and he didn’t resist – and he’s sitting across from a gruff young caravan guard-for-hire who gives her name as Ilsa. She’s wearing more leather than she’s used to, but she adjusts fairly well, throwing her boots up on the rickety table outside the Dugout and leaning back in her chair.  
  
“So you don’t think I can pull it off?” Definitely Not Nora is smirking with a distinct air of challenge, and Absolutely Not Deacon can’t help a little rustle of pride in his gut. She didn’t used to be so cocky. He likes to think he’s rubbing off on her.  
  
“Correction, my delicious little peach, I _know_ that you cannot. You can’t rely on charm and we all know that’s your bread and butter. This calls for stealth and finesse.”  
  
“You don’t think I can charm him?”  
  
“I have no doubt that you can. The end game here is to gather intel without being discovered. You can’t just up and ask him for it.”  
  
She shifts in her seat a little, quirking a curious brow. “So what’s the target?”  
  
“I’m getting to that, my delectable miniature quiche. See, our favorite tin man stays in his office all night, after his secretary goes home.”  
  
“We reviewing the obvious or are you going to tell me what we’re actually doing here?”  
  
“Patience is a virtue, my scrumptious little fruit pie.”  
  
She lifts a foot from its perch on the edge of the table to give him a firm boot in the knee, though her smile is still in full spread. “What’s with you and all the food names today?”  
  
“I didn’t have breakfast. Now, listen.” ‘Victor’ leans forward, pushing his partner’s boots off the table and leaning in to provide clandestine explanation. “Your goal is a simple one. Our mark keeps a little folder under his bed. That’s your target. You don’t even have to get it out of the office, you just have to tell me what’s inside. And good ol’ Nick has to be none the wiser.”  
  
“And how do you know about this folder?”  
  
“Young hoppy…bug…thing—”  
  
“You mean grasshopper?”  
  
“Shush, I’m imparting knowledge.”  
  
“How do you know who Sun Tzu is but you don’t know ‘grasshopper’?”  
  
“It was The Art of War, not Diagrams of the Insects of North America. Now start heeding my wisdom, already.”  
  
She chuckles, shaking her head. “All right, all right.”  
  
“Okay. I know because I’m me. But the point is, _you_ need to clap eyes on it. And you’ve got untiiiiil…” He gingerly pulls her arm over so as to check the time on her pipboy. “Call it, two AM.”  
  
“So why are we staking out here in the middle of the afternoon?”  
  
“You forget already the value of observation?”  
  
“But I _know_ Nick. What intel is there to gather?”  
  
“No bullshit,” he prefaces, and her easy air stills, her attention suddenly on him with a far more open mind. He was against this tacit ‘no bullshit’ rule at first – but he likes it when she drops her pride and listens. He likes that he can put aside the snark for a second when it’s important, and he likes that he doesn’t have to make a big deal out of it. He doesn’t adhere to the rule with anyone else, of course. But with Nora – well, it works. He tries not to think about it more than that.  
  
“If you’ve got reason to tail someone you know, or you think you know, you gotta forget everything you got on ‘em. Going in with opinions already is a surefire way to get yourself killed. Your life depends on facts.”  
  
“Finding _and_ keeping them.”  
  
He smiles. Good girl. “You got it.”  
  
She considers him for a few moments, chewing on the inside of her cheek. He knows that look. He’s seeing it more and more often these days. She knows him, now, more than he had anticipated letting her know, and that look means she’s finding out something new. Sometimes she likes what she finds, and it’s all fine by him. They can go on smiling and bantering and living like they do. Sometimes, though, she finds something that makes her a little sad, and he can’t help but hate himself for a moment. He hates disappointing her. But – he doesn’t want to fail her, either. Sometimes, he reasons, doing right by her as a teacher means doing less than she deserves as a friend. He hopes, in the end, it all balances out.  
  
“So – you picked a target close to home.” Her voice his gentle, but he can see it – she’s just a little hurt. His job is to know strengths and weaknesses, and it always hurts to see a partner exploit yours.  
  
“Yeah.” Deacon’s not going to lie to her. Not this time, anyway. Besides, she has a way of seeing through him. She’d hate him more for a clean lie than for telling a dirty truth.  
  
“Because,” she continues, brows knitting, “I’ve got to be able to lie to anyone. I have to – be able to trick anyone.” Nora lists these lessons off like the star student she is, but her tone is just that little bit…grey. He knows she needs this, knows this is her biggest weakness, knows if she’s going to do what the Railroad and the minutemen are preparing her to do, she’s got to be able to look herself in the face with a lie that even she believes. But he doesn’t like it.  
  
“Ideally, he won’t see you.”  
  
“But if he does,” Nora urges, and he grimaces just a little. She won’t let him out that easily. He knows he doesn’t deserve it, anyway, but – well. It’s still not the most comfortable of exchanges.  
  
“If he does,” he confirms, with a little nod of his head. He wonders, with real fear for the first time, if this is where she breaks. If this is where he leaves her behind – if this is her line that she won’t cross. For a second, she looks like she’s thinking about the same thing. But then something in her relents, something caves, and even if he knows it’s for the greater good, it still sends a pang of pain through him.  
  
“Okay,” she agrees, and they lapse into silence for a while as they keep their eyes surreptitiously on the mouth of the alley at her back. After a fair amount of time, he reaches forward quietly to brush his fingertips across her knuckles. She turns her hand over to wrap his fingers in her palm, and he knows they’re all right – as all right as they can be.  
  
  
With the moon beginning its high arc, the pair sneak around the edge of tin roof just outside the Valentine Detective Agency’s upper door. He won’t go in with her, he’s already told her that, but this – he doesn’t want to miss. It’s his favorite part. She’s already pulling the pair of new bobby pins out of her hair, biting the rubber grip off one end of her chosen pick with practiced ease. He watches her bend a handle into her pick, the end of the pick in the lock, and the other bobby pin over itself for her lever. It’s a complicated little procedure that happens in seconds, and he can feel the goosebumps already forming.  
  
And then she slips both bobby pins into the little opening, and his stomach clenches. This part – this part is pure magic, because she closes her eyes. Closes her eyes and lets out a soft breath and her fingers turn into an extension of her ears, her hands into the most careful, sensitive tools. She _feels_ the tumblers, _feels_ the click of a cylinder catching on the edge of the barrel. He can’t _believe_ she used to be a lawyer. Cait had explained it to her all of one time – roughly and colorfully and without much encouragement – and she just melted into it. Spent hours in Sanctuary picking and re-locking and re-picking every lock she could get her hands on.  
  
And now, she’s a magician. A minute passes, and the lock rattles as her little lever rotates the barrel. The door shifts quietly ajar. She’s in. “Got it,” she whispers, and there are tingles in his spine.  
  
“I love it when you talk dirty.”  
  
She fixes him with a smirk and a roll of her eyes before pressing a single extended finger to her lips, and he mimes zipping his mouth from one corner to the other. She handles the door as gently as a first-time lover, and then she’s inside, and the lock clicks quietly closed behind her.  
  
_Magic_.  
  
Inside, Nora takes a moment just to crouch in the dark. No light leaks up from below the stairs. He’s always been conservative about the power, and she’s walked in more than once on him sitting alone in the gloom, just his inhuman stillness and the glow of his eyes. She knows that sight like it’s her favorite painting.  
  
It sends a full-body shiver through her, and she absolutely refuses to think about why.  
  
Carefully, quietly, she slips her feet out of her boots. Her socks are old and travel-worn, but they’re more of a noise-reducing cushion than the heavy souls of her Tough Guard Ensemble. She tip-toes, low to the ground, to the lip of the stares, and tries to let her eyes adjust enough that she might be able to spot the yellow glow if he’s close. She doesn’t.  
  
So Nora descends, slow as she can, easing around every possible creak of the wood with the utmost care. She reaches the main floor like a spider, crouched with bent limbs out to her sides, eyes too dark to see in the lightless space. The folder is there, just where Deacon reported, and she shifts the paper carefully towards her, tries to read the cramped scrawl in the dim. In the effort, she leans accidentally against the mattress, and the springs creaking sounds like a thunderclap in the utter silence.  
  
Nick doesn’t speak, but she knows he’s moved. She hears his pistol leave its holster and settle in his metal hand. She burns what she can of the folder’s contents into her memory and stands. Even though she’s expecting it, she jumps when he rounds the corner of the partition wall, pistol trained expertly on her. She has her hands up and she tries for a sheepish kind of smile.  
  
“The hell?” Nick’s voice is stern, but the relief in his eyes is clear. “Nora?”  
  
“’Fraid not,” she answers, and his eyes narrow. He knows her voice. She knows he knows. And he knows that, too.  
  
“Is it Miss Spade again today?” His gun lowers, and she brushes past him, looping around his side far too closely – perhaps fueled by the high of the hunt and the discovery, and the identity she’s wearing.  
  
“Ilsa,” she answers, flipping on the lights as she enters the office proper. He pauses behind her, leaning a shoulder against the side of the wall, filling the doorway with the shadow of a suited silhouette. Nora glances over her shoulder with a cocked brow and a small smirk. “Not gonna offer a lady a drink?”  
  
“You let me know if you see a lady,” Nick answers quickly.  
  
She dons a face of offense, and then a pout, rounding his desk to take a seat on its edge and swipe the lit cigarette he’d left in his ash tray. “How harsh, Mr. Valentine.”  
  
“Gettin’ broken into rarely does wonders for my mood.” He shrugs.  
  
She’s playing the inviting spider at the center of the web, but he’s cautious. She hides in her cover identities more often now. When was the last time he really saw _Nora_? Not since he’d brought her back from Goodneighbor, and she’d been awfully quick to get back to the Railroad and put on somebody else’s face again.  
  
“Don’t worry about me, I’m harmless.”  
  
“Who says I’m worried?”  
  
“Guess I did.”  
  
“Awfully bold to make assumptions like that.”  
  
She crosses one leg over the other with a creak of leather, leans her hands back on his desk with his cigarette in her mouth. Doesn’t adjust when her vest pulls her ripped flannel up over the skin of her stomach. He doesn’t look, he _doesn’t_ look. Keeps his eyes very firmly on hers.  
  
“I like to think I’m a _very_ good judge of character.”  
  
Nick pulls his shoulder off the wall and takes a single step forward, hands in his pockets. “That so?”  
  
“It is.”  
  
“So what’s your read on me?”  
  
“I think you’re a guy who gets what he’s after.”  
  
“They say it’s my job.” Another, slow step.  
  
“Maybe I’ve got work for a man like that.”  
  
“You don’t even know my rates.”  
  
She turns on the desk slightly to face him, arching her spine in a very calculated way as one of her hands lifts to pull the cigarette away from her mouth. She blows a slow stream directly towards him. He waits.  
  
“I’m sure we can work something out.” It’s that same kind of voice. The same purposeful trap of a voice she used for Miss Spade. It draws him another step forward, almost against his will.  
  
“Say we can. This job got details?”  
  
“Plenty. But the gist is – I know a girl,” she begins.  
  
“Always a dame,” he half-smiles, and she matches him smirk for smirk.  
  
“Always.”  
  
“And this girl is missing?”  
  
“Oh, no. I know right where she is.”  
  
“Seems like maybe you don’t need a detective, then.” It isn’t until after he’s taken it that he realizes he’s another step closer.  
  
“Looks can be deceiving, and all that.”  
  
“She lose something, then?”  
  
“Something like that. She _wants_ something.” The emphasis in her voice is a brief touch of electricity to his binary soul, and he’s less than a foot away from her now.  
  
“Something that maybe doesn’t belong to her?”  
  
“Something that doesn’t really belong to anybody.”  
  
Nick is practically touching her, now, hovering over her with fingertips brushing the edge of the desk on either side of her knees. She’s still and confident, head tilted back to meet him eye to eye. He raises the skeleton of a brow, and reaches for the cigarette. “What’s she want with it, then?”  
  
Nora-gone-Ilsa smiles wanly, dodging the cigarette out of his grasp but then holding it with thumb and forefinger flush against his lips. He can taste dirt and sweat and her breath between her skin and the filter. He takes a drag.  
  
“Just to have it,” is her reply, and he takes the dog-end of the cigarette out of his mouth to better react to gravity. He’s being pulled in, and she doesn’t flinch back. They’re almost nose-to-nose and if he needed to breathe, he might wonder if he’d stopped being able to. “For herself.”  
  
“Why can’t she?” His mouth is dry – drier than usual, anyway.  
  
“I’ve been asking that myself, lately. I’m running out of reasons.” Her eyes are almost closed and he can _taste_ her words, the smoke still drifting lazily out of her mouth.  
  
“So what’s the hold up?” He doesn’t know if he can hold out against her magnet, feels his hands flattening on the desk to her sides.  
  
The annoyingly high-pitched beeping that her pipboy emits visibly shocks them both, and suddenly she’s not Ilsa anymore, and he’s not pressing his luck much, much further than he should be. He steps back a few inches and she slides to her feet, checking the screen on her wrist. “Two o’clock.” And it’s Nora’s voice, her real voice, and it’s tangibly sad. “I’ve gotta go.”  
  
He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if he _should_ say anything, so she leaves him there, and Nick stands in the dim light of his office for a while and burns.  
  
  
“You get it?” Deacon is catching up to her as she marches across the market square, and her fair clip of a pace is more than noticeable.  
  
“The Stranger,” she answers in a voice that’s not really there, a mind that’s not really there. “Here, Capital Wasteland, out west.” He’s impressed, and he intones as much, but she doesn’t seem to register it.  
  
“Where we headed?” He finally asks, even as they’re climbing the stairs out of the city.  
  
“HQ,” Nora answers flatly, and there’s something like heartbreak there. “We should check in with Dez.”  
  
Deacon feels a weight sink into his stomach. He feels…responsible. He shrinks into her shadow. “Yeah,” he says softly, “probably should.”  
  
They move in relative silence, except for the music drifting out of her pipboy's speaker. In worlds of their own, they listen to the radio.

  
  
  
_So sit down your pretty face,  
you came to the right place -  
oh, where every night it starts once more.  
  
_ “ _OOOOOOHHHHH!”  
  
_ Twin voices rise in echoes above the roofs of Sanctuary, and outliers roll their eyes on the edges of the settlement. MacCready and Hancock, however, have cracked open a pair of Nuka-Colas and are splitting a box of Fancy Lads. They’ve set up shop on a set of broken chairs which they’ve dragged out to the sidewalk, for the best view of The Fight.  
  
Nora tries to tell them it’s not a fight – it’s sparring at best. Training. But she has to admit, having an audience is actually a little fun. Neither man seems to be rooting _against_ either of them, so there’s little negative reinforcement, except--  
  
Cait’s fist catches her square on the cheek and she goes down like a tree in a forest. The sound she makes is “augh.” The champion of the Combat Zone bounces back a few steps, arms still up. “Y’still want more, or y’need a break?” It isn’t malicious. What Cait is teaching her is valuable – it just also happens to be painful more often than not. They have at least laid out a few layers of blanket and cloth sacks to provide some cushion, and Nora finds herself very grateful for it. She’s going down rather a lot.  
  
“I can take it,” she croaks, struggling to her feet and touching the tender, already-darkening bruise on the side of her face. When Cait’s expression briefly turns to concern, Nora smiles. “I’ve _gotta_ be able to take it, right? You said it yourself; I’m no good at close range if I don’t have a weapon. I can’t really afford to be caught with my pants down.”  
  
“Now unless I’m doin’ the catchin’,” Cat answers with a lecherous laugh, and Nora chuckles through her blush.  
  
“Are we flirting or fighting?” She tries to steer them back on course.  
  
“It can’t be both? Yer no fun.”  
  
Nora does her best to ignore this and adopt a more battle-ready stance. Her fists are up and slightly loose, arms bent. Cait has been in a similar position, never one to drop her guard too quickly. It takes all of a minute for the two to dance around one another before Cait’s leg hooks expertly behind one of Nora’s, and she’s down on her back again with a groan.  
  
“What’d I do?” Cait demands, even as she’s lowering a hand to drag Nora to her feet.  
  
“Kicked my ass?” Nora suggests, using Cait’s muscle to haul herself up and rubbing her backside, which had been the first thing to hit the ground.  
  
“I did, yeah. More specifically, though.” Cait is grinning. She loves the fight, Nora can tell, loves the rush and the power of it. But, in her way, she loves Nora too, and even though this is the most painful training she’s asked for, Nora can’t find it in herself to hold anything against the woman.  
  
“My…center of balance,” she hazards, rolling a shoulder backward.  
  
“Where was your weight?”  
  
“My front foot.”  
  
“So what happened?”  
  
“I didn’t have any weight on my back foot to catch myself?”  
  
“If y’know that,” Cait barks, throwing her fists up to the ready, immediately prompting Nora to do the same, “why couldn’t you stop me?”  
  
“Becaaaause…you’re more of a badass than me?”  
  
“Cute. Flattery’ll getcha into bed, but not outta the ring.”  
  
And they’re at it again. When Nora manages a successful block, the pair in their very small crowd give a whistle and a cheer. When Cait lands an uppercut in her ribs, Hancock groans in sympathy and MacCready winces, though they both voice their appreciation of Cait’s prowess. When _Nora_ lands a hit – right on Cait’s grinning jaw – they’re on their feet and hollering. But Cait doesn’t take anything lying down unless there aren’t any clothes involved (and, from what she says, rarely even then), and Nora’s world goes black.  
  
Her vision comes back like a spray of confetti – tiny pieces in no particular order, until the blue sky above can hazily be seen behind the bent heads of Cait, Mac, and John.  
  
“You hear me, Sunshine?”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
“Yer ears ringin’?” Cait’s concern is just as firm as her commands.  
  
“Nn-mm.”  
  
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Mac clearly has no particular idea what he’s doing, but he recalls this is something that is supposed to be said in the worry of a concussion.  
  
“Two.” And Nora rolls into a seated position, touching her rapidly blackening eye with careful fingertips.  
  
“Gonna have a nice shiner for a while,” Cait confirms.  
  
“Goodie for me.” The attempt is a little wobbly, even with Hancock’s hand at her back and Mac’s steadying grip on her elbow, but Nora manages to get to her feet, her attention back on Cait with one widely open and one forced-squint of an eye. “Round three?”  
  
“No can do, love,” she lilts in reply, shrugging her freckled shoulders. “Yer lights go out, lesson’s over.”  
  
“I guess that’s a reasonable rule.”  
  
“It’ll keep ya alive, anyway.” Cait pats her shoulder a little roughly, though she smiles in almost proud way. “Get cleaned up, yeah? Cold beer and hot dinner’ll do just the trick.”  
  
The two men make to escort her to her broken down house, but she waves them off. “I know the way,” she teases, and though they release her, it is with obvious reluctance. She pays little mind, however, and eventually disappears through the doorway.  
  
She’s hovering over her sink and spitting out a little blood for all of two minutes before the smell of smoke announces his presence, and she turns to see Nick hovering in the doorway. She smiles with slightly bloodied teeth, and his look of concern weighs heavily on his face. Her only response is a shrug, and he nods in silent understanding – he’s getting good at that.  
  
But he’s in the small bathroom with her, then, soaking a rag in the cool tin bucket of water that she keeps in her sink’s bowl. She doesn’t object, even as he guides her to sit on the cracked lid of the long-empty and rusted toilet. He crouches in front of her and presses the freshly squeezed rag gently against the outer curve of her eye socket. Nora hisses a little in a pained response, but then his metal hand is in hers, and she doesn’t know if it was something she did or if it was Nick, but it comforts her, and she quiets.  
  
“Wish you wouldn’t be so reckless,” he grumbles eventually, but he can’t hide his worry even in his best attempt at ‘grumpy old man voice.’ She smiles, and this alerts her to a split at the side of her lip, and she tongues it to assess the damage.  
  
“I don’t think it’s an unnecessary risk.”  
  
He notices the fresh blood at her lip, now, too, and sighs. Nick gives the cut a cursory, gentle wipe with the rag before letting the cloth rest in her free hand and taking her chin in his palm so he can better examine the extent of her beating. “Yeah, I know you don’t,” he answers gruffly, letting the pad of his thumb rest against the swelling middle of her lower lip. It’s an absent-minded kind of gesture, and he doesn’t realize he’s done it until he feels her breath stop, and he looks up to find her eyes big and round, and very firmly locked on his face.  
  
They pause this way, pinned by one another, for a long, silent moment.  
  
“Things are gonna get bad, soon,” Nora states at last. Her eyes are steely as ever, and he knows before he even sees that familiar expression that there’s no use playing with kid gloves here.  
  
“Seems like.”  
  
“Dez and Tom are working on a way to sabotage their reactor.”  
  
“So I’ve heard.”  
  
“I’ve gotta go blow it up.”  
  
“Yeah…” His brows knit, and he forgets that he hasn’t moved his hand until her fingers are looped around his in-tact wrist. And then he can’t move.  
  
“Can you keep a secret?”  
  
“To the grave,” is Nick’s immediate response, though after a second of consideration he adds, “garbage compactor, maybe.”  
  
“I’m scared.” Nora is smiling but her eyes are swimming, and his heart breaks. It’s the first time he really realizes he has one – in some intangible way – if only because the pain is so real.  
  
“I know,” he answers, and he doesn’t know how to deliver any platitudes that won’t sound horribly false. So he leans forward and presses his lips gently against her forehead, and she releases a breath like she’d been holding it.  
  
“If I make it back—”  
  
“ _When_ ,” he corrects firmly.  
  
“—you’ll be here?”  
  
“With bells on.” He doesn’t trust his smile, but he attempts it anyway. She answers it with one of her own, though it’s rather watery. “Tell you what,” he adds, finally moving his palm from her cheek to run his fingers through her hair in a gesture of comfort, “when you get back, we’ll take a vacation.”  
  
She laughs, and her face tells him she knows it’s a lie. She knows it’s a one-way trip. It’s the sentiment that hangs above them all, no matter how they try to ignore it. He refuses. It is _not_ going to end that way, not for Nora. Not for him.  
  
“Where will we go?” She indulges him, indulges herself, and his hand curls affectionately around the back of her neck.  
  
“How’s a day at the beach sound?”  
  
“As long as there aren’t any ‘Lurks around.”  
  
“Maybe we can get a patch cleaned up.”  
  
“That sounds like a bit of a chore.”  
  
“Well then maybe I’ll just do it before you get back. Give you a nice little homecoming present.”  
  
She laughs again, and it’s more choked than before. Before either of them can think better of it, she’s in his arms and he’s pressing her tightly to his chest, stroking her hair and pressing his face into the cradle of her shoulder. He tries not to think about it being his last chance to embrace her, but he holds her like it’s the last time just the same.  
  
“You’re my best friend, Nick,” she breathes against the rumpled collar of his shirt, and though he refuses to release her entirely, he lets her lean back so she can meet his eyes. “I just – want you to know that. You’re my favorite person, you know?”  
  
It breaks him. He comes apart. He holds her for a long time. He holds her until night falls, and after carrying her to bed, he holds her while she sleeps. He listens to her breathe, drinks in the funny little way she snores. He thinks about the beach, about a little spot close to the bridge he’s pretty sure he can clear out enough to make an acceptable lounging spot. When she stirs with dreams, he quiets her, kisses the crown of her head, tells her she’s safe. And he knows now, and for the rest of his life – Nick Valentine is undone. While she rests, he can hear gentle music drifting in from a neighboring house. Holding her close, keeping her safe, they listen to the radio.  
  
  
  
  
_I’m telling you friend,  
your search is at an end,  
‘cause I’m the one you’re looking for.  
  
_ The afternoon was spent reminiscing, catching up, and by the evening they were passing drinks around and trading general gossip. Nick and Nora had migrated to a soft-ish chair to allow Curie room to continuously fuss over Hancock’s injury – he took up the cushion and she had started perched on the arm, but by the time they were sharing a beer and their umpteenth cigarette, she was more or less in his lap, and thankfully their company had foregone mentioning it. Dogmeat curled up at their feet and dreamed in the twitchy way of all dogs, his head resting over Nick’s shoe so that a little puddle of drool could build up on the toe.  
  
Deacon leaned his back against the arm of the chair Nora had previously occupied, one hand idly petting the sleeping Dogmeat’s head, the other occasionally affectionately patting the ankle which Nora had let fall to rest on his shoulder. Piper straddled a cheap dinner chair across the generally circle-shaped gathering, folding her arms over the back and resting her chin on her hands. She shot the two in front of her the occasional knowing smile, which strangely both Nick and Nora seemed very intently never to notice.  
  
Preston had relaxed at Curie’s other side, Cait and MacCready lounging together across the entirety of the second couch. Deegan took up a post in a corner, and contributed occasionally to the laughter and conversation, though he mostly exchanged small, knowing looks with Fahrenheit, who guarded the opposite side of the room.  
  
It wasn’t until the hours began to grow small that there came any interruption. There was a bustle of urgent, quiet conversation downstairs, and after a nod from Hancock, Deegan descended to investigate. The conversation didn’t halt until the ghoul returned, trailing another troop of people behind him.  
  
“Visitors,” he announced simply, taking up a spot against the nearest while, “they say it’s urgent they speak to Nora.”  
  
The woman in question sat up a little to look over the back of her chair, surprise immediately seizing her expression. “Dez?”  
  
Deacon’s head shot up at that, brows raised over his sunglasses. “Tom?”  
  
The third figure cleared his throat, to which Deacon and Nora responded in unison, voices flat, “Carrington.” Predictably, the man snorted in distaste, arms crossing.  
  
“We need to talk,” Desdemona said simply, eyes firmly on her agents. “Immediately.”  
  
“You _never_ leave HQ,” Deacon noted, sounding uncharacteristically uncomfortable. Nora reached down to give his nearest shoulder a little squeeze.  
  
“This is a privileged conversation,” Carrington groused.  
  
With a gesture from John, Fahrenheit and Deegan descended the stairs. No one else moved.  
  
“More privileged than that,” the doctor added in that same, clipped tone.  
  
“Not a chance, buddy,” Hancock called, and there was a general mumble of confirmation from the rest of the group.  
  
Dez glared right through Nora, in that uncanny way she had. “You trust these people, Bullseye?”  
  
Nora glanced back around the room, and there was no other answer to give. “With my life.”  
  
Dez sighed, but held up a hand when Carrington began to object. “Then we need to speak to your…friend.” Her gaze had shifted to Nick, who was craning his neck to peer at the new group over his shoulder.  
  
“Me?” Nick was readably suspicious.  
  
“You’re Nick Valentine.” It wasn’t a question. She’d met him before, when he tagged along with Nora on her Railroad duties.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I need you to tell us—”  
  
“Mostly me,” Tinker Tom interjected brightly. Dez sighed again.  
  
“I need you to tell us,” she began again, “everything you know about The Stranger.”


	10. That Which I Have Revealed

_Yes, we all fall in love,  
but we disregard the danger._

_  
  
_  
  
There was a space on the sofa between Nick and Nora, barely wider than the length of a palm, but it seemed to tug on the edges of the room like a singularity. All eyes drifted to it periodically, except those of the pair in question. They each stared, exhausted, in opposite directions. Outside, the very first signs of dawn were painting lighter blues in the indigo of night.  
  
Dez sat on the edge of the low table in front of them, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers, sorting through all the information still hanging heavy in the air for the third time.  
  
“So you don’t have any proof either way?” The woman summarized, sounding as tired as the pair in front of her looked.  
  
“No,” was Nick’s flat response.  
  
“And you’ve never seen it, Bullseye?”  
  
“No.” This answer was just as toneless, but it was quiet, almost as though she wished she didn’t have to give it.  
  
Deacon wanted to reach out to her, wanted to climb into place on the couch at her other side and throw a protective arm around her. Wanted to let her know, with silent touch, that she wasn’t alone. But he lurked obediently behind Desdemona, doing his utmost to ignore the holes Carrington’s glare was attempting to burn in the back of his head. Behind Dez’s other shoulder, Tom fidgeted a little nervously, glancing from face to face. He was used to crowded spaces, sure, and at some point he had met everyone here, but he didn’t have his terminal or his toolkit, and he was out of the crypt – it made him feel distinctly naked.  
  
“Tom, what’s our next move, here?” Dez was glaring over her shoulder at Tom, who jerked a little in response to the sudden question.  
  
“Well we could wait for him to show up again, monitor Nick’s processing – if, if he’s okay with that.”  
  
“Do you see it frequently?” The leader of the Railroad fixed her attention back on Nick, and he made it a point not to match her stare.  
  
“Only ever seen him in a firefight.” Deacon could see Nora wince visibly at the emptiness of Nick’s voice. He sighed. “It’s random. I can’t predict it.”  
  
“No go, then,” Dez concluded, looking back to Tinker with brows raised.  
  
“I…I think Amari’s plan is our best bet, then.”  
  
Nick stiffened at this, Bullseye’s brows knit hopelessly, and the rumblings of protest began to form between both Piper and Deacon. Dez held up a hand sharply enough that the silence it demanded was granted, but tension grew throughout the room.  
  
“Then we have to work with that.”  
  
“Don’t think that’ll work, boss,” Deacon spoke up at last, grit in his voice. “We need—”  
  
“An interface, I know. We have synth agents, it’s possible—”  
  
“Now don’t I get a say in who gets to track their mud through my noggin?” Nick’s anger was suddenly palpable, and Nora winced again so visibly that he spared her the briefest, apologetic glance.  
  
“Nick,” Dez began, voice stony, “I know how this has to sound. But we’ve had dealings with Zimmer before. If we can locate him – hell, if we can get an _advantage_ —”  
  
“You might also just fry what little’s left between my ears. This is my life you’re talking about!”  
  
“I know.” Desdemona’s voice was solemn, but she at least had the decency to keep her eyes on Nick’s. “Believe me when I say I’m not asking you to do this lightly. But you _know_ what this man is capable of. You only have to look at Bullseye to know.”  
  
Nora’s whole body stiffened, and Nick’s fists balled. “Now you hold on a minute—”  
  
“I don’t have _time_ to be sensitive,” Dez shot back, and she and synth were both on their feet. They were very nearly the same height, and the sudden heat between them seemed to fill the room. “You need to understand that I don’t doubt my agents’ capabilities, and Deacon and Bullseye are my _best_. Not just at reconoissance, do you understand? Bullseye and Glory are the best heavies I’ve ever had. Deacon’s intel is second to none. And Zimmer got them _both_. Look at what he _did_ to them. He knows who Bullseye is – who she _really_ is, what her ties are. And now he’s out there at large somewhere. Do you think he won’t take his chance to strike? To finish what he started?” At this, she shot a hand out toward Nora, who looked like she was doing her best to disappear into the fabric of the couch.  
  
“Guys!” Deacon was on his feet now, too, holding his hands up in an attempt to stop the row before it really revved up. “It’s kind of moot right now – Amari said most people couldn’t hold up to the task, and there aren’t any other synths of Nick’s generation. He’s like a – two-point-five or whatever. There’s also some kinda trust – issue – thing?”  
  
“And you’re not exactly inspiring a lot of trust in you or your organization.” Nick was fuming in that encased way he had – trying to keep everything controlled and under wraps, though unable to keep from clenching and unclenching his fists in agitation.  
  
This was…strange. Nick had always been a staunch supporter of the Railroad, operating more or less as a permanent tourist for all the time that Nora had known him. Then again, they’d never stepped so personally into his sphere before – the cause had never _demanded_ anything of him. He’d always given freely. And Nora saw it now – that little kernel at the core of the issue. Just as Dez was rearing up for another verbal round, Bullseye stood.  
  
She slipped her hand into Nick’s as it unclenched, and felt the jolt of surprise run through him before his grip softened around her fingers. “I’ll do it,” Bullseye offered simply. “We’re not going to try to make you do anything,” she added, shooting a steely glance at Desdemona before returning her attention to the detective. “But I _am_ asking. Me.” She gave his hand a little squeeze, and he looked like a man about to crumble.  
  
“After last time—”  
  
“We rushed in. I did. It was – it was all tense.” Her expression was pleading, and Nick might as well have been the only person in the room. “So – we take it slow. We go in calm. And…” She glanced thoughtfully toward the floor for a moment or two before apparently reaching some kind of decision. “And we do it alone.”  
  
Then Bullseye’s gaze was sternly on Des, who looked right on the edge of a dressing down. “I’ll tell you everything that’s important to the Railroad, and you’ll trust me enough not to ask any questions.”  
  
“That’s a _lot_ of trust, agent,” Desdemona scowled.  
  
“You’re asking for a lot.” Nora’s tone was firm, and her eyes were hard in a way Nick recognized.  
  
There passed a few minutes in which the women entered some kind of silent standoff. The crowd in the room shifted, uncertain how to react or who to support. At last, however, Dez sighed, her weight resting back on her heels in a far less aggressive stance. “I am.” She turned briefly to Tom, who offered a shrug – a gesture particularly suited to his gangly form.  
  
“Tom needs data,” Dez continued at last, declaring it as one ups the ante in a barter.  
  
“Amari can give him what’s relevant.”  
  
“Bull – uh, Bullseye, we – we don’t _really_ know what’s gonna be relevant—” Despite the trepidation in his interruption, Tinker was obviously excited by the prospect. Nora had never met a man so pleased by _lack_ of information.  
  
Rather than responding immediately, however, Nora glanced up to Nick with a question in her face. He stared down at her a little helplessly, before offering a little shrug. Nora nodded. “Give us some time with Amari, and then you can ask all the questions you want.” She gave Nick’s hand a little squeeze, and he returned it in some sort of confirmation.  
  
Silence settled again, Dez and Tom exchanged a coded look, Deacon fidgeted with obvious aggravation, Hancock thumbed the hilt of his knife and Piper instinctively reached out to seize his wrist in warning. At long last, Dez nodded, and the deal was sealed. Just as she opened her mouth to speak again, however, Nick cut in.  
  
“Not tonight.” He paused, considering. “Today. Not right now.” He held off mounting objections from both sides by holding up his free hand, and Deacon noticed it was synthetic flesh. Nora had taken his metal hand, and for a reason he couldn’t yet identify, he felt a surge of affection for his partner.  
  
“You’re asking for a lot of one person. She needs rest.” There crept a tiny smile onto Nora’s face, and she turned her face away to hide it, but not before Deacon could match it briefly with one of his own. Nick glanced around the room, as if only just remembering their audience – and the size of it. “We all do.” The darkness of the room murmured in general affirmation.  
  
Again, Dez let out a long sigh, but lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. “We can’t afford to push it too long,” she warned.  
  
“Tonight?” Nora suggested. Her hand received another, gentle squeeze.  
  
“Tonight,” Dez agreed, before turning her eyes to Nick – more in acknowledgment than in question, but he nodded as if she’d asked him just the same.  
  
“Okay!” The raspy voice lifted from a shadow on the couch, and Hancock stood, shocking the entire gathering into looking at him. He clapped his hands together, as though in preparation. “Let’s aaaaall find a bed, dig?”  
  
Slowly, uncertainly, the room emptied. Piper took a bedroom off to one side, Preston and Curie negotiated with Hancock – which really just consisted of the ghoul handing out facts that provided no room for negotiating at all – and found themselves with free rooms at the Rexford. Cait and Mac had jumped to get in on this deal, but the mayor declared the best they could get was a discount. All other Railroad agents would be charged full price, and were not offered beds in the state house. John took no secret joy in cultivating the scowls on the faces of Carrington and Desdemona.

 

When the floor had mostly cleared, Deacon finally reached a little desperately for Nora and pulled her none too gently into a bone-crushing embrace. Nick obediently – though reluctantly – released her, and she wrapped herself around her partner with an equal kind of fervor. They held one another for a minute or longer, leaving Nick and John to glance around the room and at each other a little awkwardly.  
  
When at last the two agents pulled themselves apart, hesitant to separate completely – Deacon’s hands lingering on her shoulders, and Nora’s fingers curled gingerly around his forearms – they were both a little weepy-eyed. Though, admittedly, Nick was forced to assume this on Deacon’s part, given the presence of those needlessly dark sunglasses. But something in the man’s face tickled his detective senses, and so he decently looked away, hands finding their way into his pockets.  
  
“You don’t have to do this,” Deacon warned quietly.  
  
She didn’t have a real reply, so she stood on tip-toe briefly to plant a little kiss against his cheek.  
  
“I’ll be okay. I promise.”  
  
“No bullshit?”  
  
She laughed. “No bullshit.”  
  
  
Sunrise was painting the sky proper by the time Nick and Nora made their way up the little attic stairs into the tower. There was a bit more of a breeze, now, with the pink dawn drifting through the little hole Nora had created in the bricked window the previous night. She kept to the shadows untouched by morning even after Nick had pulled the folding stairs up behind them. He was halfway through loosening his tie before he realized she wasn’t following, and turned to face her questioningly. “Everything all right?”  
  
“Not really.” But she smiled, shrugging her shoulders a little with her arms crossed, elbows cupped in each palm. “I guess I didn’t – know if I’d be invited up again,” she offered a little shyly, acknowledging the general silliness of her uncertainty with a humorless little laugh.  
  
He crossed the floor to her again and braced his hands against her arms, looking down with concern creasing his face. “I feel like I’m the one who’d need the inviting.” He tried a smile, but let it fade when it didn’t prompt a brighter expression out of her. “Deacon’s right, you know,” Nick said gravely, “you don’t have to do this. You’ve already given more than you owe.”  
  
“It’s not that.” She leaned in a little to plonk her forehead against his chest with a sigh, and he curled his arms gently around her. “It’s just – it’s not going to be like before. With Kellogg.”  
  
“Yeah,” he answered stiffly, running a comforting palm over her spine.  
  
“I’m –” he listened to her dance around the word ‘afraid’ without actually saying it “—worried.”  
  
“That it won’t give them what they want?”  
  
She laughed a little bitterly, resting more fully against him, arms snaking around his waist. “That – you’ll get to see more than you want to. Of me, I guess.”  
  
He smirked a little, still trailing that hand up and down the length of her back. “I doubt that.” But he grew a little more still when she sighed again.  
  
“No, I mean – the last time…” Nora finally pulled back, and he looked down at her with knit brows. “You just – might not like what you see.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“ _So_ ,” she answered, voice growing a little stern, “me right now, right here, I’m…okay. Me, in that place…”  
  
“Hey.” He gathered her to him again, nosing into the crown of her head. “If I can handle your wisecracks, I’m sure I can handle anything else you can throw at me.”  
  
Nora laughed in a quiet, hollow way. She shifted her weight to her toes to add a little height, and pressed a little kiss to the in-tact side of his neck. His fans kicked up noisily, and she chuckled.  
  
“You don’t sleep,” she noted, sneaking her hands around to the front of his shirt and giving his half-loosened tie a little tug by the not.  
  
“True.” He raised a brow, head canting a little above hers.  
  
“But you’re going to make me.” She pulled his tie free of itself, and he didn’t bother to stop her.  
  
“Also true,” he agreed soundly.  
  
“So here’s my question, detective.” She popped a button free below his neck.  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“You wanna give me something nice to dream about?”  
  
He laughed, and kissed her, long and soft.  
  
  
  
The evening walk to the Memory Den felt far too like a walk to the gallows. He’d woken her gently, brushing his fingers through her hair and offering her a cigarette after she’d blinked the dim room into view. They shared a little smoke before he’d helped her up, helped her find her clothes – _greatly_ resisted making them any later than they were going to be in the process – and finally took her hand to descend into the state house.  
  
Hancock offered them a quick wave before returning to the cards that had been spread out on the low table in front of him. Deacon sat opposite, also staring at the apparent game they’d set up, but he stood when Nora had landed in the room, and as she passed him she brushed a comforting hand over his shoulders. “I’ll be fine,” she assured, and he gave her hand a squeeze before letting her go. As she made her way down the stairs, she caught the tail end of a mild argument between the two men.  
  
“So…I can bid?”  
  
“What? No! Your hand’s not even worth five yet!”  
  
“So then _you_ bid?”  
  
“Have you been listening at all?”  
  
“To what?”  
  
“To—!” There was a very Deacon-y huff, and a very Hancock-esque laugh.  
  
It was raining when they’d exited the old state house, so they sped across the square and over the street with Nick holding his coat aloft above them. The Den was empty but for Irma when they arrived, which earned a curious round-the-room glance from both of them. As if picking up on this, Irma spoke up while beckoning them forward.  
  
“Amari thought it’d be best to keep the place as calm as possible.” Strangely, as Nora approached, Irma brushed her hand gently against her still rain-damp shoulder, concern knitting those too-blonde eyebrows. “Sugar, are you gonna be all right?”  
  
Whatever strange, silly wariness she’d felt the other night fled from Nora, and she offered the woman an earnest, grateful smile. “I’m sure as hell gonna try to be.”  
  
Irma’s smile was still concerned, but she seemed to respect the answer too much to question it further. Though when her attention drifted to Nick, that smile became a little more devilish, and suddenly Nora remembered _exactly_ why she’d felt such hesitation before. “What about you, handsome? You gonna need a little special treatment after your big adventure?”  
  
Nick’s arm had looped gingerly around Nora’s waist, and he gave an apologetic tip of his hat to the hostess. “Think I’ll have to take an indefinite rain-check, Irma.”  
  
A knowing smile was aimed at Nora, the arm around her, then Nick again. “Someone finally hooked you? I don’t believe it,” she teased.  
  
“Hook, line, and sinker,” Nick confirmed with a little shrug of feigned regret. Irma laughed, and winked for the second time at Nora, who for the second time felt her blush radiate out from the inside.  
  
When they’d passed the flirtatious woman, but before they rounded the bottom of the stairwell into Amari’s proper office, Nora seized Nick by the waist. Before he had time to register what had happened, his back was against the wall, her fingers were hooked into his suspenders, and she was kissing him, soft and sweet and grateful. He chuckled, and indulged the moment for a little while longer than strictly appropriate before they both deemed it unfortunately necessary to continue onward.  
  
Amari was reviewing a little bundle of notes latched to her clipboard when they finally arrived, and very politely did not mention the faint smudge of faded, old lipstick on the beaten-up white of Nick’s face. It wasn’t until he caught Nora stifling a giggle that he managed to catch his reflection in the dome of the nearest memory pod, and made an effort to rub the evidence away with a not-quite-as-surreptitious-as-he-intended rub of his hand.  
  
They reviewed the same warnings, the same information, the same explanations, though this time Nora’s fingers played idly in the spaces between the thin skeleton of Nick’s metal hand. Strangely, they caught the little smile that this brought, ever so briefly, to Amari’s face when she had finally noticed. Her tone had improved just a little after that, and she sounded just mildly less dire.  
  
“I want to emphasize,” the doctor explained as she drifted on the wheels of her chair between the two pods, turning the occasional dial and making a note every now and then, “that it will be easier to create a more cohesive experience if you begin in a familiar, peaceful place.”  
  
“My happy place,” Nick echoed the same sentiment, with far more light humor this time.  
  
“As such, yes. You will need to provide that information, Nick, and you,” she addressed Nora over the side of her pod, “must try to find peace with allowing your decisions to be made for you in this context. Allow your mind to conform to thoughts that are not your own. The less you resist, the easier the transition will become.”  
  
Nora merely nodded, and waited in silence as a few more minutes passed. Finally, Amari declared them ready and began a process that lowered the glass domes over them. Slowly, she began to count backwards from ten, and Nora tried to keep Nick’s voice in her mind.  
  
_You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re safe._  
  
  
The air is sprinkled with salt. She is holding a woman named Jenny for the first time, and she can smell her cheap perfume and it makes her smile. She combs her fingers through Jenny’s long, blonde hair while she writhes against their sheets. Her mouth is full of blood and there are large spaces where she knows teeth should be. Her hands are twin cities of pain. She is tracing her metal fingers over the brown curves of a woman on a dusty floor, and it reminds her of the taste of ocean breezes. She is letting the woman undo her tie and she wonders, not for the first time, is this real? Remember this. _Remember_. She is sitting alone in her office, aching quietly, trying to establish a truce with the emptiness. She is holding Deacon’s bloody teeth in her hands and listening to Zimmer cut her a deal. Tooth for tooth. Her pain for his. She is kissing a man that tastes like an ashtray in the dim of his office and she tries to tie herself to the moment like an anchor. She holds a metal hand in her palm and runs her fingers along its joints and thinks _perfect, perfect, perfect_. She is kissing that ash tray mouth in a dirty stairwell and she’s in love. She is kissing that ash tray mouth and she can smell the sea air and she hopes it can be this way, always.  
  
She hears the ocean gently push its foam onto the beach. The air is sprinkled with salt.  
  
The reality of the moment hits her hard enough to knock the wind out of her, and she stands on the beach, toes in the sand, gasping like an astronaut devoid of helmet. There is a hand on her back, a hand on her waist, and she’s kissing that ash tray mouth and it’s him, and she’s here, and she’s safe.  
  
“The beach,” Nora says when they come apart, and the light in his eyes is something close to worship.  
  
“The beach,” Nick confirms.  
  
“This is where you go?”  
  
“Doc did say my happy place.”  
  
“How am I here? I thought I was just…the room, or whatever.”  
  
“You’re here, I think,” he answers, tapping a metal finger against his temple. She smiles.  
  
“And I was _here_ , too.” The words are vague, but he seems to understand. This is a memory hinged on her. She looks around curiously, drifting away from him in the process, and she doesn’t really notice her feet are bare until her toes are in the water. She looks down, sees the skirt of her dress playing gently in the breeze, feels the large brim of her hat tugging in the same direction. “You remember what I was wearing?”  
  
“It’s…a pretty clear memory.” He clears his throat, but she’s still smiling.  
  
“So…where do we go from here?”  
  
Nick frowns, glaring around with a shrug. “I don’t know. Doc didn’t exactly hand us a manual.”  
  
“If only,” Nora agrees, letting her hand fall naturally into his, and he takes it gratefully. “Well – so it’s like a case. Where does he live?”  
  
“In my head, apparently.” He can’t keep the bitterness out of his tone. Nora gives his hand a squeeze.  
  
“Okay. Where does your head live?”  
  
Nick looks at her, baffled at first, but slowly the wrinkle between faded brows relaxes as realization begins to creep upon him. “With my cases,” he answers at last, and she’s grinning like a proud teacher, “in my office.”  
  
The air grows stale in a matter of seconds, and when he turns around, the beach is gone, the boards of his office floor creak, motes of dust float in the dim beams of the lights, and Nora is gone. He begins to panic for a moment at this, but somehow, he feels her smile – like she’s left it behind for him. Nick lets out a needless breath and turns to face the whole of his office.  
  
“Where do you live,” he mutters, glancing from box to box full of files, cabinets stuffed to bursting. But…no. That’s not where he keeps The Stranger.  
  
He moves behind the small partition wall near the main entrance of the building, and it’s there, just peeking out from under the unused mattress: His file. A metal hand scoops up the small collection of notes, and he flips the case open to review words he’s already got memorized.  
  
“All right, buddy,” he grumbles to himself as he blindly turns the tiny corner to step back into the main room, “where are you?”  
  
“Never very far.” The voice is familiar yet not, and it is accompanied by the metallic _clink_ of a flip lighter snapping open.  
  
Nick’s head jerks up from his notes, and the man he sees sitting in _his_ chair, resting his too-clean dress shoes on _his_ desk, is someone he knows – and doesn’t. He glowers.  
  
“C’mon, Val,” the figure answers smoothly around the cigarette pinched in the corner of his mouth, “don’t be that way.”  
  
“Val?” For some reason the name sits heavy and bitter on Nick’s tongue.  
  
“Sure. You don’t remember?” Finally, the Stranger lifts his gaze to match Nick’s, still shadowed by the brim of his fedora but clear enough that his smile can be registered. It’s a smug kind of smile – the kind that makes a guy think about popping him one in the jaw for no good reason. “Jenny used to call us that.”  
  
Nick freezes. The Stranger laughs.  
  
“Welcome to the waking world, Nicky boy. Not quite what you expected?”  
  
“You’re gonna tell me what the hell you’re talking about.” His tone is ragged, mimicking the fraying edges of his temper.  
  
“Oh-ho, givin’ orders now? Did you go and grow a pair when I wasn’t looking?”  
  
“I’m not in the mood for games.”  
  
The Stranger sighs. “You never are. That’s not me, you know? That’s all you, tin-man. Me, games are my specialty. Interrogations used to be my favorite part of the case. Thrill of the hunt, you know?”  
  
Nick does know. He knows that feeling. He knows the uplifting pride of a case well-solved. But he doesn’t say that. He only glares.  
  
“Yeah,” the Stranger laughs, kicking his feet off the desk and leaning forward in that beaten-up chair, “I thought so. Now you’re gonna come at me for talkin’ nonsense, but you know it ain’t. You know, somewhere at the back of that big metal brain of yours. I’ve only been tryin’ to yell it in your ear for years now.”  
  
“I have no idea—”  
  
“Come _on_ , Val, this is us you’re talking to. You can’t lie to me. You and me? We’re one in the same.”  
  
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”  
  
The Stranger laughs heartily, pushes himself out of the chair, and takes a step toward the synth in front of him. He’s a somewhat stocky man, barrel-chested with a dusting of hair on his knuckles. He has a voice like he gargles gravel and lives on gin, and the smile of a man who has seen too much and can’t be bothered to care anymore. He sticks out a hand with an open palm, smiling in that sickly way up at Nick – and it’s only then that Nick realizes he’s rather taller than this Stranger. “The name’s Nick Valentine,” the Stranger announces, and the familiarity of the delivery brings a crowding panic to the back of Nick’s mind, “good to meet me.”  
  
  
  
  
“Lemme ask you somethin’, Deac.” Hancock leaned back on the couch, throwing his heels over the long-abandoned caravan game about which the Railroad agent still appeared to be fuming. He could have _won,_ damn it, if John had bothered learning how to play.  
  
“Shoot,” Deacon prompted, gathering up the cards from the table at last, and prying a few loose from under Hancock’s boot.  
  
“Whaddya think of our very own Nicky and Nora?”  
  
Deacon paused without looking up at the mayor. “What’s there to think?”  
  
“Don’t tell me ya didn’t hear ‘em this morning.” Hancock grinned, and Deacon went red under the shadow of his sunglasses.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Mayor,” was the man’s response at last, keeping his eyes occupied with the sorting and shuffling of his deck.  
  
“Yeah, and I ain’t never touched a chem in my life.”  
  
“So you’re learning sarcasm now? Well done.”  
  
“Bite me, spy-boy.”  
  
“Well not if you’re not gonna ask _nicely_.”  
  
There was a pause that went on for too long, and Deacon risked glancing up to see the mayor of Goodneighbor apparently putting real _thought_ into this proposition. His face went hot and he ignored the little flip in his stomach because nononono, he was _not_ thinking about that, he just wasn’t going to. Ever.  
  
“Maybe later,” Hancock concluded at last, with a wickedly knowing little smirk that Deacon very pointedly ignored. “But ya know what I mean. Been years. Was beginning to think they weren’t ever gonna get their shit in order.”  
  
“I don’t know if their shit is in _order_ so much as it is piled in generally the same location.”  
  
John laughed with a kind of earnestness that Deacon just wasn’t used to, and the ghoul nodded. “Yeah, I feel ya. But still. Big step from how they used t’be.”  
  
“Is it though?”  
  
“Ya bein’ vague on purpose or ya tryin’ t’get me to do the bitin’?”  
  
_Abort abort abort_. “I just mean,” Deacon answered hurriedly, flipping through his cards long after it had been necessary, “they’ve always been close. This doesn’t seem much different.”  
  
“Ya don’t think so? Way I see it, takes a lotta confessin’ for types like them to go from close to porkin’.”  
  
“Your words are as poetry, Mayor Hancock.”  
  
“I got a way about me,” John acknowledged with a sneaky breed of grin. “But I’m serious. When you an’ Nora came here, way she was talkin’…” His expression faded into a distant frown, and he glanced off to the side as if to stare directly into memory.  
  
“Yeah,” was Deacon’s only response, though it was heart-felt – for him, at least. He understood that kind of worry.  
  
“I ain’t thinkin’ they’re bad for each other or nothin’. Think she picked a good guy if she don’t want her heart broken. But I gotta wonder, you know – does _he_ know what he’s gettin’ into?”  
  
“Nick?” Now Deacon was just genuinely confused. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Ah, it’s mostly a ghoul thing, but Nicky kinda fits the mold anyhow. Us ghouls ain’t immortal, really, but we live longer than any smoothskin can. It’s somethin’ ya gotta think about when ya take up with one. Years is all ya got together, but ya got centuries to yerself.”  
  
“That’s…not the most fun line of thought.”  
  
“Nah. But I love that girl, ya know? Nick, too, even though he only gives me lip. They’re like two sides’a the same cap. They make sense together. But they both already got a lotta heartache to handle.”  
  
“This is all surprisingly insightful of you.” Despite himself, Deacon’s observation was sincere. His estimations of Hancock were always generous in terms of combat and ruthless politics, but he’d never expected so much out of the man on such a personal level.  
  
“I got my moments.”  
  
“So – why _didn’t_ you and Bullseye ever…” He trailed off, but Hancock filled the silence with a belly full of laughter.  
  
“Ah, I knew from the second she walked into my town with that circuitboard she only had eyes for one.” He reminisced with tangible nostalgia, and it brought Deacon back to the first time he’d met her – she’d been with Valentine, then, too, on the glaring end of the lights and the losing end of Desdemona’s stare. And he’d known, too; if she responded badly, if she took the initiation as hostile, Valentine would follow her – even if he didn’t agree. But she’d spoken softly and quietly and with care, and not at all how he imagined someone who had done the things she had should.  
  
_Bullseye_ she’d told them, after some cautious thought, and he wanted to laugh – could remember seeing her perched high with that merc by her side, calling out targets and accosting them with deadly accuracy. He could remember, once, when they’d thought she missed, and he’d gone back later under cover of dark to check – remembered the little tingle he felt when he traced his hand over the just barely distorted mark of Mac’s bullet. She hadn’t missed at all. Her bullet had gone through the same hole.  
  
He still had that shell. He’d found it lodged in the dry dirt and without thinking, he’d kept it. He wondered again if he shouldn’t give it back, make a gift of it for her.  
  
“Yeah,” Hancock was smiling again, and it drew Deacon out of his thoughts with a jolt. “She does that to people, don’t she?”  
  
“Does what?”  
  
“Ya get that look, and yer changed. And you ain’t got any choice about it, ‘cause she changed ya before ya knew what was happenin’. Maybe ya like yerself a little more – least when she’s around.”  
  
“That’s…not inaccurate,” Deacon answered guardedly. Hancock guffawed again, his humor and delight far too easy-breezy for a man so deadly.  
  
There passed a moment which seemed to sober the mayor, and he examined the tin he’d been fidgeting with for the past half hour, gaze dull. “Y’think they’ll find Zimmer?”  
  
Deacon’s whole body tensed just perceptibly. “You know Bullseye.”  
  
“Yeah,” John confirmed gravely, “I do.”  
  
They shared a singular, silent fear.  
  
“We’ll be there,” Hancock decided at last, flopping backward on his couch and letting a Mentat begin to dissolve on his tongue. And it was strange how Deacon found himself automatically agreeing before he realized he’d made a decision – because, he supposed, he hadn’t. He didn’t have any choice about it. Nora had entered his world, and he’d go to the edge with her.  
  
“Yeah,” he agreed quietly, “we will.”  
  
  
  
Two detectives sit on opposite sides of a desk. Nick feels distinctly uncomfortable on this side – the side usually occupied by clients. He’s sat here before, of course, but to his memory he can only recall doing so in front of one particular woman. The man – and he is a man, flesh and blood and that scruffy five-o’clock shadow that Nick himself feels sure he’d want to manage better – who sits across from him insists they are the same, that they are both therefor on the proper sides of the desk.  
  
He doesn’t buy it.  
  
“Why would there be another copy of me inside my…” He searches for a less human word. Despite his lifelong struggle toward personhood, he suddenly feels the dire need to separate himself as much as possible from this Stranger.  
  
“You can say brain, jack. It’s not wrong.”  
  
Nick grimaces. “Still doesn’t explain why.”  
  
“Not a fan of the play within a play gag, huh?”  
  
“Could you do me a favor and shoot straight with me for five minutes altogether?”  
  
“Ah, Val, you know I already have.” That smile is starting to sicken him.  
  
“Not quite what I meant,” Nick grouses, reaching up to rub his forehead impatiently, feeling his hat tilt with the gesture.  
  
“All right, pal, I’ll level with ya. We’re the same, but you’re like – a snapshot. Me? I’m the real deal.”  
  
“Without a body or—”  
  
“You want an explanation or not? Shut your trap before somethin’ flies into it. Now, listen. ‘Cause what I’ve got to say is a lot. I’ll try to keep the words small for ya.” The Stranger chuckles at the grumble this earns him, and he sits back in his stolen chair, letting smoke curl towards the ceiling from the stream he blows out his nose. “See, we go in, get the neurotransferal done, and then you? The scan they make? You go on ice, so to speak. I don’t. I go home and get drunk. And I come back in a week for some fun ‘talk therapy’ and another scan. I go in for six years, buddy. Every week, chattin’ and scannin’. Day the bomb hits, morning after my last scan. I don’t even miss a whole day.”  
  
He blows a new trail of smoke over Nick’s head, still smiling that cocksure smile. “See, folks over at CIT, they were makin’ big strides in robotics. Programming personalities, somethin’ about – transfer psycho-patholojahoozit. Big sciencey words that boil down to this: They strike gold the _day_ they gotta go to ground. They think they’ve figured out how to make the true artificial intelligence. Man-made, electronic life.”  
  
“Synths,” Nick concludes sourly.  
  
“Don’t get ahead’a me. First actual synths’re still a couple decades off. They gotta rebuild, replace personnel, yadda yadda. But they can’t just shut down their pride and joy project. So what do they do? They upload their little prototype AI to a terminal and let it run, all through their reconstruction.”  
  
“Prototype?” The word leaves a bitter taste in Nick’s mouth.  
  
“You and me both,” the Stranger confirms with a self-satisfied nod, “I was just first, is all. Spent a fair chunk of time on that box, all zeros and ones and aware.”  
  
“So you’re – what? The last scan?”  
  
“No, no, Val, keep up! I’m _every_ scan. The fully formed copy of a brain across six years of development and change – a realized personhood, packaged in a couple bytes of data. Boring and a little constricting at first, but it did give me the advantage of not feeling quite so culture-shocked when they loaded me up. I was there when they were uploading you to – well, you. One scan, the earliest, wrapped up in a plastic body.”  
  
“Bull,” Nick shoots back, fists clenched. It can’t be true. He’s been free from the old Nick for a handful of years now. There’s nothing left of that man but impressions. He is _not_ some two-dimensional replication. He has spent too long convincing himself otherwise to go so far back now. “I’m – alive, or whatever you wanna call it. I’ve got – I’m not some trussed up Mr. Handy, I’m a person, damn it.”  
  
The Stranger holds up his hands as if to calm his counterpart. “Whoa whoa, Val, no one’s arguing that. But you’re only a person ‘cause you have over a century of experience. Me, I’m a person because it’s who I am. I was complete from the beginning. You – developed. Not something the eggheads planned for, I don’t think. Fun for them.” That horrible smile. Nick _couldn’t_ be based on this – this jackass.  
  
The look on Nick’s face prompts something like sympathy in the man across from him – but only just. “C’mon, Vally-boy, this is good news for you! You’ve spent all your time feelin’ like some inadequate ghost, but you’re your own man! May have started out as me, but you sure as hell ain’t me now.”  
  
“Then how are you here? _Why_ are you here?”  
  
“Elementary, my dear Val.” He pauses for a beat to see if his joke lands. Nick’s face is annoyed and unmoved. “No? Ah, well. Me? I’m here for _revenge_.”  
  
  
  
Piper reached up with both arms, fingers intertwined, to coax a few cracks along the length of her stretching spine. Beside her, Preston leaned back into the vague comfort of the couch, letting his musket rest with stock planted on the floor between his feet and barrel resting against one knee. He sighed, she yawned, and they both listened to the gentle creaks and rustles of the Rexford’s nighttime activities.  
  
“You think it’ll take very long?” Preston spoke as if to the ceiling, glaring upward like it had personally offended him, but Piper recognized this as his Thinky Face. Whenever the man had to consider anything with any intensity, he retreated from the world, behind a determined kind of glare. It was endearing, in its way.  
  
“Maybe? Those memory pods do weird things with time, I heard.”  
  
“Heard? You’ve never used one?” His eyes were on her now, expression a little surprised.  
  
“Have you?”  
  
“Once…” His lips turned down for a moment, and that cold kind of sadness he was capable of blew in like a winter breeze. He had that secret kind of hurt, Piper had noted before. But he wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to press for information. He was too – honest. He’d probably tell you. That wasn’t a gamble to take lightly. “Once was enough,” he concluded at last.  
  
“I’ll bet.” She brought her knees up to her chest, hooking the heels of her boots on the edge of the beat up sofa and wrapping her arms around her shins. “Never saw the appeal, myself. Good memories are usually the closest ones. Everything starts to look a little worn from far back.”  
  
Preston nodded. He thought he understood. The Commonwealth was a place that forced you to live in the moment, and turned everything in your past into a kind of lesson. Life could be dangerously short and dry of pleasures for the average citizen. Better to keep your head in the right here and now – better to keep from looking backward until something took you from behind.  
  
“Yeah,” he answered eventually, nodding vaguely.  
  
Silence fell again, and they passed it for a little while.  
  
“So, the Gen—Nora. And Nick,” Preston began again at last, raising a curious set of brows in the reporter’s direction.  
  
She laughed a little, meeting him with a challenging smirk. “Yeah?”  
  
“They, uh – they finally…?”  
  
“Mm? Opened that mom-n-pop pancake house? Committed their lives to Atom? Performed a romantic duet?”  
  
He smiled. “Something like the last one, I guess?”  
  
Piper chuckled amiably, shrugging her shoulders. “They seem to be getting along.”  
  
“Really well,” he confirmed.  
  
“They went on a date.”  
  
“ _What_?” His eyes were huge and round, his face caught between shock and a grin. She couldn’t help but laugh outright.  
  
“Yeah, some kinda candlelight dinner up in the tower, I think? She dressed up all nice. Didn’t see Nick, but Hancock says he got decked out, too. _Someone_ called a song request into Kent’s show and dedicated it to some anonymous heroine. Three guesses there.”  
  
Preston gave a nod in an absent kind of approval. “Wow. That’s pretty official, I guess.”  
  
“For them? Yeah.”  
  
“Think it’ll work?”  
  
This took her by surprise. She opened her mouth to reply with immediate affirmation, but the honest look in his eye gave her pause. Those two – they’d always been pretty tight-lipped and private, much to her personal chagrin. Harder than hell to get a good interview or quote from either of them. Piper glanced off to the side in thought, chewing on her lip. “I sure hope so,” she answered at last with a little sigh, “those two could use a little good in their lives.”  
  
“Yeah,” Preston agreed, a quiet emphasis in his voice that struck her right in the heart, “they do.”  
  
  
  
“What – on me?”  
  
“What?” The Stranger laughs in earnest. “What have you done, Val? Put your nose to the ground in this shitty excuse for a city? Nah, what would be the point? You’re just a guy.”  
  
“I feel so much better.”  
  
“Maybe pull your head outta your backside for three seconds strung together and put your big-boy detective pants on. You really think you’re askin’ me any pertinent questions?”  
  
Nick bites down on a bark of a reply. Much as he hates himself for it – and that’s a new kind of convoluted, given the situation, which loops his mechanical headache back onto itself – the man across from him has a point. This hasn’t been his best sleuth work so far. He sighs, wrangles in his strained and scattered nerves. He needs to _think_.  
  
The evidence. What’s missing? What does he need to know?  
  
“ _Are_ you the Stranger?”  
  
“Now we’re gettin’ on the right track. That’s what the egghead lackeys called me after a while.”  
  
“But you’re just – some code, essentially?”  
  
“If ya wanna be reductive about my sterling personality, sure, sure.”  
  
“So then what’s with all the sightings of you in Capital Wasteland? Out west?”  
  
“Pickin’ up speed now. You stop lookin’ at the gams on your squeeze long enough to listen to what she was sayin’?”  
  
Nick scowls, fists tightening again. “Don’t.”  
  
“What? I’m not blamin’ ya. A nice set’a sticks is a nice set’a sticks. Don’t know if I’d be too interested in what she was sayin’, either. Not unless she was whisperin’ it real nice.”  
  
Nick’s teeth clench, his eyes flare. “Stop.”  
  
“Mm?” The man looks genuinely surprised for a moment before he catches on, and barks a laugh of smoke out into the room, loud and deep. “What, that dame? You defendin’ her honor now?”  
  
“ _Don’t_.”  
  
“You tell me, mac, I say anything that wasn’t true?”  
  
Nick is on his feet, chair sliding back behind him, wooden legs grinding against the floorboards. “You deal with me, all right? Leave her out of it. I get what you’re after, and you got it. I’m riled. Job well done. You need something from me, or should I just cut loose now?”  
  
Again, the Stranger laughs, and Nick finds himself hating that sound, hating how much he can hear his own voice in it. Could he have _ever_ been like this man? No wonder he’d felt so inclined to separate the two of them as far as possible.  
  
“I think she’d have a cooler head than you, right now.”  
  
“I’m giving you a warning, here.”  
  
“Should we ask _her_?”  
  
Nick stops. Freezes. “She’s gone,” he answers hoarsely.  
  
“This is the land of dreams, Nicky. You got control. And you know the real interesting thing about that?” He doesn’t wait for Nick to answer, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He can’t think of anything to say. “You and me, we’re the same. I live here, too.”  
  
There was a kind of shift in the texture of the air, a sudden feeling of being slightly more crowded. A floorboard creaked behind Nick.  
  
“So – I just don’t get to pick what I wear here at all, then.”  
  
The sound of Nora’s voice causes him to spin around, and against everything he wants to believe about himself, his mind halts and his jaw drops.  
  
Nora spins, ever so slowly. The action is facilitated by the fact that her feet are bound into two delicate, white roller-skates. Something in his stomach twists. She’s decked out in some kind of far-too-floofy, far-too-short imitation of a gimmicky diner server’s uniform – even topped with that little paper hat, tipping at a rakish angle over her pristinely curled hair. As she spins – his not-stomach flips and he clenches a groan in his jaw – he sees those stark, black seams running up the backs of her stocking’d legs.  
  
“Yeah,” the Stranger agrees in a lascivious tone that puts a bestial grumble in Nick’s chest, “just like the picture.”  
  
“What the hell am I supposed to be, anyway?”  
  
The Stranger is quick to answer, awful glee in his voice. “Miss April,” he declares proudly, “Nuka Girls 2076.”  
  
Both Nora and Nick whip around to stare blankly at the man, and he lets out another gravelly belly laugh. “Don’t blame me, toots. I work with what I’m given. It’s the only one he has. Good edition, though.”  
  
Nora couldn’t stop a ridiculous grin from curling over her lips, and Nick does his absolute best not to actually meet her eyes. “We’re supposed to be going over a case, here,” his insists flatly, hiding whatever expression has crossed his face under the shadow of his hat’s brim.  
  
Nora places a gentle hand on his back, and he eases into his chair again. The Strangers grins up at her, and she glances between the two men before very delicately, as modestly as possible, taking up a perch on the edge of the desk that separates them. Nick frowns, the Stranger grins, and Nora does her best to look as dignified as possible in what only a man could think of as a good pinup costume.  
  
“So where are we?”  
  
“You been listening, doll?” The Stranger lays the charm on heavy, leans an elbow on the desk just shy of her leg, blows a little funnel of smoke slightly to the left of her. Nick’s flaring annoyance is a physical presence in the room.  
  
Nora simply smirks. “You wanna fill me in, slick?”  
  
“Now there’s a gal who knows how to grease a wheel.” The Stranger aims a horrible smile at the woman above him that is clearly a show for the man behind her. Nick folds his arms. “Here’s the skinny so far: Me and your battery-powered boyfriend—” Nora swallows a laugh and Nick looks absolutely outraged “—are more or less the same guy. He’s more like the demo version, and I’m the _whole package_.”  
  
“Mm.” She keeps her tone impassive.  
  
“And our Val here is just figurin’ out that I’ve been around since the day I was born, uninterrupted. I’ve been a myth since the first artificial intelligences took their first steps out into the world. Well, not really steps – first ones were pretty immobile. But here’s the answer to a question he’s not asking: Those stationary AIs out there, and all the little ambulatory imitations that came after? They’re me, too.”  
  
A brow rises over a mildly interested expression, but all Nora replies with is a flat, “Mm.” The Stranger looks at once put off by this lack of reaction to his drama, and Nick takes no small pleasure in witnessing the man try to recover from this stumble.  
  
“Not – _me_ me, of course,” he continues, frowning slightly, “but you can’t build a human mind from scratch, it turns out. ‘Least, the Institute never figured out how. They needed a foundation. So they took my digital noggin and scooped out all the real Nick bits, and filled it back up with binary nonsense.”  
  
Nora cants her head, and crosses her legs slowly. She doesn’t speak. Nick watches the Stranger’s eyes wander down to those knees, those just-exposed thighs. His fists clench, but he thinks he’s cottoning on to the game, here. Shouldn’t surprise him that anyone with the Stranger’s smugness not yet acquainted to Nora would bite off far more than they could chew.  
  
“Which is how,” the man goes on, tonguing the inside of his cheek as he scrambles for attention he clearly feels he’s losing, “I’m everywhere. All the generations have a little piece of me. Can’t quite separate a person completely from their mind. Little bits of me in all the Institute handiwork.”  
  
Nora rewards this bit of information by leaning back on her palms, putting her in a pose that very guiltily reminds Nick – more vividly than he would like to admit – of that calendar page. The Stranger, for his part, half-smiles like a kid on the edge of getting praised in front of the class, and he doesn’t hide the way he looks her over.  
  
“That doesn’t really explain how you’re so complete, here. Also doesn’t tell us why you’ve been spotted so many places.”  
  
He takes the bait, already overeager. “That’s the beauty of it. Man becomes myth, becomes legend, becomes inspiration. I know there were a few confirmed copycats, satisfying general wasteland madness with wholesale murder. Some were just rumor. All from the same source. At least one was an escaped prototype.”  
  
“Another?” Nick can’t keep quiet at this, and the Stranger shoots him a glare like he’s the third wheel who invited himself on the date.  
  
“You think you’re the only one, rustbucket? You got away. Some of us weren’t so lucky.” Just as it looks like he’s about to launch a further verbal attack, Nora reaches down languidly and plucks the near-stub of his cigarette out of his hand, takes a drag that draws the flame out of it entirely, and blows a stream directly toward his face.  
  
The man looks like he’s been struck with a frozen fish. His jaw hangs open just slightly. Nick finds himself torn between a horrible green feeling and a strange sense of pride.  
  
“And how you’re here?” She breathes the last of the smoke out of her lungs.  
  
“Nicky here – he’s me. Kind of. Good foundation to collect and build code. Then we hit a break. You’re gonna love this, dollface.”  
  
She keeps her face carefully blank. The look in his eyes is hungry.  
  
“He got hooked up to premium Institute tech. Processed a lot of data, left an impression behind. Got me better access to myself. Let me get out and about a helluva lot more.”  
  
“Kellogg,” Nora almost hissed, attention drawn away from her act and knitting her brows in sudden, rampant thought.  
  
The Stranger gives a little shiver, and Nick absolutely _hates_ how familiar it feels. Hates that he knows exactly why it happened. Hates that this man could associate _that_ horrible memory with his own animal impulses.  
  
“You say every fella’s name like that? Could give mine a try.”  
  
She looks confused for a moment before realization dawns, and she adopts an almost pitying smile. “ _Stranger_ doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue.”  
  
“Bet your tongue could make anything—”  
  
“ _Why_ are you here?”  
  
He smiles again. He likes having roused her, even – perhaps especially – if there’s a little ire there now. “Funny, I was just tellin’ your friend here, before you came.”  
  
“So catch me up.”  
  
“Anything for you, doll.” He reaches up to rest a hand over her knee. With the kind of deft speed he’s only seen her employ under fire, Nick watches Nora half-spin toward the Stranger and quite literally stomp the wheels of one skate into his chest, pushing him back into his chair and scooting that chair to the extent of her leg’s reach.  
  
Both men stare, both feel something stir.  
  
“Be a gentleman and wait for an invitation, will ya?”  
  
The Stranger breathes once, hard and ragged. Nick balls his fists.  
  
“’Scuse me. Forgot my manners for a minute.” But he’s smiling and god, _god_ does Nick hate it. Nora lowers her attacking skate and rests its toe lightly against the man’s knee. He stairs for a minute or two before continuing. “I got an itch for vengeance.”  
  
“On whom?”  
  
_Whom_. That’s a pre-war education for you. Both men smile faintly.  
  
“Monster always lashes out at its maker, right?”  
  
“The Institute? Why would you wait so long to have a go at it?”  
  
“Been _tryin’_ to get your beau’s attention for years.”  
  
“And what’s the difference now?”  
  
“Now?” He licks his lips like a man eyeing a rib-eye, leaning toward her dramatically while theatrically raising his hands in an indication of keeping them to himself. “ _You_ came lookin’ for _me_.”  
  
For the first time in far too long by his estimation, Nora looks pointedly at Nick. They share a silent exchange, and Nick feels a strange tingle at the occurrence – something secret, something _theirs_. Eventually, he nods and gives a relenting shrug of his shoulders.  
  
Permission gained, Nora leans forward, smiling archly, letting the wheels of her skate slide ever so slightly toward the Stranger’s thigh. “What kinda revenge are we talkin’?”  
  
“You got a stake in this?”  
  
“I’ve got a bit of a personal grudge.”  
  
Instinctively, Nick glances to her hands. There aren’t any scars. She has no scars, here. For a moment, his heart aches.  
  
“You suggesting an alliance?”  
  
“I’m suggesting –” She reaches forward to seize the slightly crumpled collar of his button-down, gingerly at first and then with a sharp tug forward, dragging the wheels of his chair toward her “—you help me, and maybe I tell Tinker Tom not to fish in here and cut you out with a digital ice cream scoop.”  
  
“Who—” He looks vaguely amused and _more_ than a little interested, and his pupils fill his eyes when she jerks him closer.  
  
“Who do you think laid the groundwork to blow up that _entire fucking facility_?”  
  
“Tell you what,” he answers in a smarmy sort of way, apparently completely content to allow himself to be manhandled – woman-handled, perhaps – in so direct and rough a manner, “you give me a kiss, toots, and I’ll give you anything you want.”  
  
Nick can feel his teeth grinding. She lifts a hand to the man’s cheek and ghosts a thumb just under his lower lip. The Stranger’s breath shudders into silence.  
  
“Payment on delivery. You gonna cooperate?”  
  
“Sweets, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”  
  
The room dissipates. Their bodies float in an infinite darkness before washing away. Amari’s voice calls them slowly and softly into consciousness. When they stumble to their feet with fuzzy heads, she tells them three hours is the longest she can safely recommend. Tells them, when they object, that if they need more time, they need more rest. Tells them, too, that she has been assured they will not be required to debrief until the morning. Tells them, gently, to go to bed. They yawn and she shuffles them off.  
  
In the gloom of their makeshift tower room, his pent-up, wound-tight patience snaps. He seizes her by the waist and pulls her in. Kisses her, long and not at all soft. Tries to put all the unsaid things he’s ever regretted keeping to himself into the weight of his body against hers. Sucks in every breath she lets out like a secret. Tastes the warmth of her tongue, the skin of her neck, the scar just under her collarbone. He takes her to the ground, her fingers twisted into the gaps of his neck, and groans into the fabric of her shirt. He lays her bare, pinches softness between his teeth, drinks in all her little noises like life-heat to a freezing man. Whispers love against the skin of her belly, slicks the patchwork of freckles that dust her hips with an eager tongue. Lights the darkness with his eyes when he peers up at her between her thighs, savors the way she arches beneath him. She writhes, and he drinks her in like the fruit of knowledge, the spring of life. He keeps her, keeps her, keeps her.  
  
  
Late into the night, she curled her back against his chest and smiled blearily into the quilt of the mattress. His arm hooked around her, possessive, kept her close. Sleepily, a step away from a dream, she craned her neck to look at him and said, “Hey, Valentine,” like a reassurance.  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“I’m yours.”


	11. Who Mouths Mercy, and Invented Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains brief PTSD flashbacks to assault. The section is blocked off by horizontal lines for easy skip-ability. Otherwise, relatively canon-typical violence.

_Though we share so many secrets,  
there are some we never tell._

 

“You!”  
  
The woman marching toward him was the very definition of “on a mission.” Tom and Deacon were at her heels, and Carrington stalked behind at a slower pace, looking as sour as anything. Nick grimaced.  
  
“We’ve given you plenty of time.” Desdemona was on the windup before she’d even come within a yard of him, and he felt accosted into a halt. “It’s almost noon, now. We can’t afford delays. We need to debrief the pair of you.” At this, Deacon glanced around, ginger brows wrinkling above his sunglasses with the first, cold bead of sweat of oncoming panic. It seemed to come to him so easily now, Nick noted. He wondered why he hadn’t put much thought into it before – Nora hadn’t been the only one trapped down there in the dark.  
  
“Where’s Bullseye?” Deacon’s eyes were firmly on Nick, and the synth could only stretch his grimace wider across his lips in reply. The little Railroad envoy glanced at one another, save for Deacon, who was most certainly glaring, unseen, at Nick. “How – how do you keep _losing_ an entire _person_?” This little bit of outrage brought the group’s attention to the spy, Carrington huffing audibly in as much disapproval as he could he could force into a single exhale – which, if you had ever been on the wrong end of his dressing-downs, you’d recognize as being a whole hell of a lot.  
  
“I – wouldn’t say lost,” was all Nick could muster. Deacon pressed him silently under that shaded stare. There was something fiercely loyal there, something that Nick felt he could understand, if only vaguely. “You might wanna talk to Hancock. He’s – getting patched up.”  
  
The boiling anger under Deacon’s skin ran visibly cold. “Shit.” There was sudden realization – sudden complete and total understanding in his expression. It scared Nick a little, if he was honest with himself. But he was grateful for it, too. He nodded, and Deacon was on the steps up to the old state house before Nick’s head had even drawn back level. Just as Dez and Carrington began to object, their agent spun toward them, hands held up with strange firmness for the man in question. “I’ll get her.” Again, there was a jumble of words as two people tried to contradict this decision, but this was met with another, stronger, “ _I’ll get her_.” With that, he was gone into the building, leaving Nick to face the little crowd on his own.  
  
“How long until she’s back?” Desdemona sounded like a woman at the very end of a usually long rope.  
  
“I don’t – know. She’s not really—”  
  
“Nick, we had an agreement.”  
  
“She can’t avoid us forever. This kind of dereliction—”  
  
“Damn it, what the hell do you want from me?” Nick barked over Carrington’s indignant tone. “What do you want from _her_? She’s trying. She’s…” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with metal fingers.  
  
_I’m doing what I can, Nick. I'm trying, too._  
  
“You _know_ what happened to her.” His voice was hollow in a way that gave Tom clear pause, who shifted slightly away from his employers. “You know what – what that does to a person. You can guess, anyway.” Nick frowned. This was uncharted territory for the most part, and he was already up to his neck in the mud of it. How had he ever thought he could do this? How had he ever thought he _should_?  
  
He shoved his hands helplessly into his pockets. “I know what you’re doing is important. Look at who you’re talking to. I know better than most.” When he met Desdemona’s gaze, he registered shock in her expression as he watched her see him – really _see_ him, the state he was in, for the first time. “You didn’t ask if she gave anything away.” He didn’t give them a chance to reply. “Because you know she didn’t. She wouldn’t. She’d die first, and she damn near did. She didn’t do that for herself. Didn’t do it for Deacon or even for me. She did it for _you_.”  
  
“He’s right.” The sound of Tom’s voice was so unexpected that all three turned to him – Carrington’s obvious outrage tempered by the surprise of the others. “Dez – we have a little time. Whatever’s left, they’re not what they used to be. And they’re not close. Look, I’ll – I’ll go talk to Amari, okay?” He looked up to Nick with such a fiercely honest face it made a synthetic heart twist with uncertain guilt. “You can trust me.”  
  
There was a stretched, prickly moment. Then Nick nodded, and Dez relented. She held a hand up to Carrington’s immediate objections, and Tinker took off in the direction of the Memory Den. “Fine,” she told Nick, glaring up at him with that quiet, calculated anger she always held close to the surface. “I understand.” She absently ran a set of fingers over her covered shoulder, and Nick knew immediately there would be a scar there – maybe even a set of scars. The way her jaw twitched under the pressure of her teeth pumped that guilt all the harder through his coolant. He didn’t want to be at odds with Desdemona – lord knew she had to have made sacrifices of her own. “I _understand_. We’ll do what we can for now. But we do need her. We absolutely do.”  
  
Again, all Nick could do was nod. The remaining Railroad representation drifted away, and Nick took a moment to light and finish a cigarette before retreating back into the old state house.  
  
When he mounted the stairs and made his way upward, he could hear the scene before he could see it. There was a quiet rumbling of voices – one raspy, one strained with some kind of west coast whine, and one stern and exasperated. Hancock was leaning his back heavily against a wall, legs sprawled in front of him. Deacon was crouching at one side, speaking low and urgently, and Fahrenheit was at the other, stimpak gripped in her teeth and hands quickly and deftly wrapping a fresh wound on the mayor’s arm.  
  
There must have been hell itself on Nick’s face, because the moment Hancock caught his expression he waved his uninjured arm like swatting away some irrelevant fly. “Flesh wound. Got plenty’a those already.” When this didn’t seem to calm the detective, he continued with a little more effort in his smile. “My fault, anyway. Shouldn’t’a tried to get her knife off her.”  
  
Deacon groaned in recognition, though not without sympathy. Nick’s forehead fell into the cradle of his own hand as Hancock issued a little grunt in response to some sharp action delivered by Fahrenheit. It was a mess, all of it. This whole situation. He should never have – he just –  
  
He’d known something wasn’t quite right when she’d woken up in the middle of the night. He’d heard Deacon and Hancock mention as much, but she’d seemed so…calm in the few days since her return. But she’d shot up next to him, sweating and whimpering, and she hadn’t let him touch her. He had tried to understand that, tried to empathize but – she’d always been so unflinching with him, always so accepting of his physical presence in her space. It was the hook that drew him in; if touch was a rare commodity for Hancock, it was something of a fairytale for Nick. Granted, that was mostly by his own doing; he tended to avoid touching people altogether in a surefire measure of circumventing the cold pang that struck him when they recoiled. And Nora, in that quiet, careful way of hers, had never allowed him to keep her at that arm’s length – rather literally. It had surprised him at first, even in the little ways she breached that level of intimacy. A touch of her hand against his arm, a little squeeze of his fingers in her warm palm, the first time she’d ever kissed his cheek and set him on fire.  
  
And suddenly he realized – perhaps, really, for the first time – how much he’d grown used to the consistency she brought to him in that regard. Nick had thrummed with an unnamed ache in the year she’d been gone, and in the short days since she’d come back he hadn’t had any real amount of time to think of anything other than her absolute, real, very immediate physical presence. He had wanted so badly to pull her in against him, but one touch of his fingers against her trembling shoulder and she had screamed and scrambled backward and sobbed. He’d curled that metal hand in like an unwitting monster, tried – hoarsely – to whisper to her, to call her back into the moment from wherever she’d gone (and he had his horrible suspicions).  
  
But Nora had looked at him in a way he’d never experienced before. She looked at him with _fear_. From the moment she’d laid eyes on him down in that stinking vault, she’d never shown fear. Curiosity, certainly, and then fondness and then – something a little more carnal that he guiltily enjoyed. But this? This was like a blade between his steel ribs. This was a sudden, sharp mystery he hadn’t the faintest idea how to solve.  
  
He’d crept toward her on his knees and she’d pressed herself into the corner after scooping up her switchblade. He knew she slept with it under her pillow, and was certain that was a new habit, but he hadn’t thought much of it. It made a kind of sense. Anything that made her feel secure – he wasn’t going to question it. But she’d _brandished_ it at him, hair in her face and teeth bared like an animal. She held it out like a threatening shield. And he’d crumbled.  
  
Nick had made it to the folding stairs in a strange, half-circle crawl, as though rotating around a woodland creature he didn’t want to frighten – though, he had to admit, probably one that foamed at the mouth with radiation and was well at home with quick and messy kills. He’d scrambled downstairs floor in the dark, bungled his way into a chair, the table, Hancock’s leg, and finally managed to make enough racket to wake the ghoul. There were raised voices, a scramble for light, a terse and confused explanation, and then she had appeared on the stairs, his button-down still hanging haphazardly on her frame, knife still in her hand, completely unfamiliar expression on her face. John had approached her in that same, cautious way, had tried to soothe the taut aggression out of her spring-ready-to-snap stance, had placed his hand ever so gingerly over the blade in her hands –  
  
And had gotten that blade in a clean slice down his forearm for his trouble. She’d fled back into the dim of the tower and Fahrenheit had stepped in like a bolt of lightning, slamming the stairs home to their groove in the ceiling and immediately crouching next to the mayor. Nick opened his mouth to protest – he didn’t want to isolate her now, of all times – but Hancock was mumbling and Fahr fixed him with a cold, stony glance.  
  
“It’s better this way,” she said. Her voice was as clipped as it usually was. Not unlike Nora, Fahrenheit played her words carefully, never spoke more than she had to. Every sentence was a meticulously aimed projectile. She was all points, no small talk. “When she has a fit, she mostly wants to be alone. If she wants out, she’ll use the window.”  
  
“You – what – you mean this happened before?” Nick stood, helpless. Nothing was making sense. Hancock shot him a deeply sympathetic look that somehow made him angry. Why couldn’t he _understand_? John Hancock, the ghoul most out of his gourd in the entire Commonwealth, seemed to have some kind of certainty about Nora that he, Nick, just couldn’t keep from slipping between his fingers. His teeth clenched. He didn’t understand his own anger, either. He wasn’t entitled to her – to any part of her. But he _wanted_ this. And he was _trying_ –  
  
He was _trying._ He’d never been brave enough for that before. Never – felt enough about anyone to gather his courage, before. Had never been so close to _having_ something before.  
  
“Someone’s gotta go run crowd control,” John grunted, flexing his fingers which caused another dribble of blood to squeeze itself loose and earned him an exasperated sigh from his temporary nurse. At the blank look on Nick’s face, he let out a light, sad kind of laugh. “She’s gonna be outta commish for at least a day. Those Railroad bigwigs ain’t gonna cotton to that. Gotta keep ‘em off her ass for a while. No job for the faint of heart.”  
  
“Why?” He hated this – this useless feeling.  
  
“They don’t know how to stop pushing. They can’t. They can’t afford to.” Fahrenheit was speaking again, mechanic and battle-worn. “Unstoppable force, immovable object.”  
  
“They’re gonna do what they gotta,” Hancock chimed in, though he paused to grumble when Fahr took a moment to mention stitches. They argued briefly – something about a ghoul’s skin not holding itself together long enough for a stimpak to heal a wound under tension, something else about the injury not being that bad, something more about someone not putting up with anyone’s idiot stubbornness just so he could go and get himself a good infection in the name of macho bravado.  
  
“You – approve of that?” Nick felt more lost than ever.  
  
“’Course not,” John answered in a tone that very clearly displayed offense at the idea that anyone could think otherwise. “I’m on her side, here. But she knows what she signed up for, and they know it, too. If it means snuffin’ out the last pieces of the Institute? When it comes down to it, she’s expendable.”  
  
There was an audible click of metal-on-metal as Nick instinctively clenched his fists. Before he could argue, before he could voice any frustration, Fahrenheit spoke up again, turning her gaze up to rest steadily on him at long last. “Not to us. We’re small picture when it comes to Nora. But she works for an organization that’s all about the big picture.” The woman sighed, brushing her ragged cut of hair out of her face. “Go outside. Get some air. Stop them from getting too close, yet.”  
  
So he’d gone. He’d left only by a few feet, not even a yard away from the old state house, but somehow Nick still felt like he was abandoning…everything. Like he was running away. It was an oily feeling that clung inside him even now, as Deacon pushed himself to his feet and spoke.  
  
“She still upstairs?”  
  
“She didn’t come down,” was all Hancock could provide. Deacon seemed to understand. In the best of times, no one could guarantee Nora’s position if she was out of sight – she liked to fight from the shadows, and more by habit than anything else, she drifted off the edges whenever there weren’t eyes pinning her to one place. Now, her mind where it was - there was no telling.  
  
“Okay,” Deacon answered through a sigh, running his hands rather believably over that pompadour wig. Nick wondered briefly how long he’d kept his hair that he would instinctively remember it after all these years of sequential disguises. Before that train of thought could station itself at any conclusion, however, Deacon had turned to him with a curt nod. “Okay. We’ll give her a few minutes of quiet, and then I’ll go up.”  
  
“You sure—”  
  
“Nick.” The use of his name shocked him into silence. Deacon was usually one for colorful epithets, or at least a sarcastically lilting _Mr. Valentine_. “I can’t – it’s not up to me to tell you everything. But you gotta trust me. She’s not – herself right now. But I – know that person up there. I got this.”  
  
“Helluva thing to ask, to trust a liar,” Nick answered helplessly.  
  
“Yeah.” Deacon smiled in an equally ineffective way, sharing a brief moment of relief with the synth in front of him. It would be easier with fewer objections, and he knew – very intimately – how much it had to hurt, being shut out of Nora’s world like this. Hopefully Nick could understand it was for the greater good.  
  
He hated himself for that thought. That was the way the Institute rationalized their evils. The _greater good_ was worth a few hundred, maybe thousand deaths. A million enslaved lives. But this, he soothed himself, was not the world’s greater good. It was just Nora’s. And that, he decided, was something worth sacrificing for.  
  
Hancock was repositioned to his favored couch, given an inhaler like a child is given a pacifier, and slouched into bleary contentedness in a matter of minutes. Fahrenheit returned to her general position in the shadows, though stayed notably closer to the mayor, shoulders against the wall and arms crossed. Nick had tried to sit on the opposite sofa, but in the end couldn’t contain his nervous energy, and instead began to take a slow turn about the room, cigarette in his mouth as predictably as ever. Deacon watched him, sympathy welling up in him. He wondered, vaguely, if Nora had ever felt this way – if, during Deacon’s darker moments, she had paced around the room and fretted in her concentrated, pointed way.  
  
There was little conversation. Hancock occasionally murmured something, sometimes earning a quiet reply from Fahrenheit or Deacon, sometimes not. Fifteen minutes and six cigarettes had passed, and the room was a haze of smoke. Nick grumbled at his newly emptied pack, to which Hancock laughed and offered up one of his own. Fifteen more minutes, three more cigarettes – he was trying to conserve, now.  
  
At last, Deacon stood, and the room’s eyes were on him. He simply nodded. Understanding immediately settled over the group, and Deacon made careful, quiet work of unlatching the attic stairs and tip-toeing his way up. Nick watched uselessly as the man’s legs disappeared, and Fahrenheit gingerly folded the stairs back into place. It felt like a lifeline was being cut. He sighed in a cloud of smoke and returned to his slow, circular track.  
  
  
  
Deacon let the dark settle around him and into his eyes when the stairs closed behind him. When he could make out the general silhouettes of the space inside the tower, he took a few steps toward the center. Peering up expectantly into the dusty and half-collapsed rafters, he called out in the most familiar way he knew: “Marco?”  
  
He waited. The silence went on too long. He wanted to believe she’d just run off, nervous as that would make him. They had an agreement. You always answer. _Always_.  
  
No matter what.  
  
  
  
  
“Marco.”  
  
Her breath stings. She coughs up something wet and warm. Rough concrete cuts at her legs through the rips in her jeans, and the slump of a figure next to her remains motionless.  
  
“ _Marco_.” She is more emphatic, more desperate. She sees flashes of the times they would call to each other across the corpses of a cleared battlefield, half in jest, half in relief to hear that the other survived while out of sight. She coughs again and it feels like something tears inside, and she sees the blood this time, thick and dark on the pavement beneath her scabbed hands.  
  
“Fucking _Marco_!” Nora hobbles on her knees to close the few inches that separate them, and she shoves the bloody pulp of Deacon onto his back, watches his chest shake and hears his lungs rattling with the effort. She breathes hard, and the fact that he is breathing the same air is nearly enough to take the edge of agony off the action.  
  
“Fuck’s sake,” she hisses, collapsing onto the ground beside him, resting for the first time in – god, who could tell anymore? In a basement with no windows, no clocks, no light – pain became the only measure of time. Time only related the rests between assaults. The world outside, the way it turned and spun beneath the sun? None of that had mattered for a long while.  
  
“You _answer_ me, fucker,” she half-sobs, sprawling like him on her back, aching hands resting over her stomach. “You _always_ answer me.”  
  
The bruises and still-swollen bumps of Deacon’s face shift just enough to show a smile, and she can feel it more than see it under the glare of nearly forgotten sunlight. “Polo,” he spits, and she hears the blood spatter with the effort. He keeps his broken arm pulled into his core like a wounded wing, but reaches blindly with the other to take hold of her hand. She grips him hard, and it is painful for both of them, but there is something magical to that – something so distinctly _alive_ about it. They are free. They are together, here, and they are fee.  
  
They lay like this for an incalculable amount of time. They watch the sky in spite of the pain that the light drives into their heads, having been absent from their lives for so long. They watch the occasional, mottled bird or two streak across the blue in hapless, tiny flocks, disjunct and belabored in their flapping. They savor the white of clouds passing inside the frame of ruined buildings that surround their little paved courtyard. They drink in the world, they suck down the air, they taste the coppery, bloodstained flavor of a life they had once resigned themselves to losing.  
  
When darkness begins to creep over the wasteland, they rouse from in-and-out sleep that stole their consciousness in brief waves. Bracing against each other and the walls, they find a door that gives – thank god; neither of them think they can manage the dexterity it would take to fiddle with a good lock and both are sure they don’t have a bobby pin between them – and discover the U-shape of a building they’d been surrounded by comprises a small apartment complex. This gives them a little pause – a lot of hidey-hole compartments throughout a larger shell, and they have no weapons beyond the switchblade she’d rescued from her cell and the shoddy pipe pistol he’d wrested from a guard, which held all of three shots. They can’t run. They can barely stand. So they relent. If they die now, at least they die free.  
  
They stumble down a hallway until they reach a door that’s locked – the best promise of salvage. The doorframe is warped and rotted, and Nora just manages to slide the blade of her knife into the crack like a teenager with a credit card, forcing the bolt back and letting the moldy wood swing inward. To the pair of broken people at its entrance, the apartment is a haven. Secluded enough to avoid most looting, it still boasts a sofa, a ransacked but not quite emptied kitchenette, a broken window facing outward on the far wall, a set of small, in-tact stairs in the corner, and even the mostly moth-eaten remains of a large rug.  
  
They immediately seek out the bathroom. They move as one, and neither tries to force the other to rest while they explore alone. Neither wants to separate. Neither wants to risk it – not now, not ever again. So they bear one another’s weight and rifle through drawers, open hinged medicine-mirrors, dig into cabinets until they come across a first aid kit. There are three stimpaks sitting haphazardly within, and without needing to consult, they each take one to gingerly inject into some less beaten part of the other. They save the third. They will need it, and probably soon. They don’t want to debate over who will receive it.  
  
There is a single bed upstairs that they don’t take. Nora gathers the blankets and two rotten pillows into her arms, and Deacon helps her pull the ripped cushions off the couch on the first floor. They sleep close, on top of the rug, on their little pile of cushions and pillows, huddled under the thin blanket. He wakes up to silent screams in the dead of night, shouts “Marco!” into the dark, and she has her arms around his sore ribs in a second.  
  
“Polo,” she answers in a whisper against his back, nosing into his spine.  
  
When she can’t find sleep and his breathing stills, she leans over his body, tries to suss out the sounds of life, and finally whispers a desperate “Marco?” into his ear. He wakes at once and turns toward her, their arms tangling together.  
  
“Polo,” he assures her, and they drift off fitfully again, calling out every so often and always, _always_ answering. It’s a promise – unspoken but firm. They will always answer.  
  
  
  
Deacon stilled his body in the way he’d been trained to, trying to filter through the sounds of the creaking old building and the bustle outside in search of familiar, human noises. At last, carried on the afternoon breeze through the hole knocked out of the bricked window, he heard it: A weak, soft, “Polo.”  
  
He exhaled relief. True to their tacit promise, she answered – she would always answer.  
  
It took him a little time to struggle out to the roof – he wasn’t quite so flexible and nimble as she; he vaguely recalled her mentioning something about “gymnastics” before the war, but admittedly he had been less than alert after that as his mental faculties had become consumed with an attempt to figure out how to wedge “gymnasty” into a conversation. She would forgive him later, when he applied the perfect pun at the perfect moment. When at last he’d made it through, Deacon did his best not to look down as he edged around the outside of the tower until he found her, tucked up against the outer wall and shrouded in the afternoon shadow it cast. Perfect place to see but not be seen. It made sense.  
  
“You here, partner?” It may have sounded a bit convoluted to anyone else, but he saw understanding register in Nora, and watched her simply nod in response. Taking this as his all-clear, he crouched next to her, preserving a little space between them cautiously. Eventually, she lifted her free hand – the other still clasping her knife – and he recognized the invitation. Deacon took that hand in his own and tucked himself in beside her, leaning his shoulder briefly and gently into hers. They sat like this for a good while, saying nothing, barely moving, barely there.  
  
There had been quite a few days like this, after they’d made it out. Silence while they mended and clung to one another. There was never much to say – never much that _could_ be said. There weren’t words for their circumstances, and so they didn’t try to make any. They just kept close and quiet, sharing something unspeakable.  
  
“Where’d you go?” Deacon prompted eventually, running the pad of his thumb gingerly over her knuckles. She took a little while to answer, but he had nearly infinite patience for Nora, so he waited, letting her come to her words in whatever way she needed.  
  
“The raiders.” Her voice was dead. His hand around hers was suddenly vice-like. They didn’t speak, but he pulled her in, looped his arms around her and let her, by degrees, sink until she buried her face into his shoulder.  
  
“I hurt Hancock,” Nora choked at last, and his grip around her tightened into a squeeze again.  
  
“Not too bad.”  
  
“I _hurt_ him.”  
  
“He understands.”  
  
“I attacked him.”  
  
Deacon sighed. She was right. He knew it, she knew it – everyone downstairs would know it, too. He couldn’t lie to her about it, either. It was a problem. But, he felt himself inwardly insist, it was an understandable one. A worthy one. It wasn’t for nothing, and it wasn’t anything they all weren’t willing to take on.  
  
“Yeah,” was all he said, rubbing his palm gently over her far shoulder. She cried again, and he let her. He didn’t shush her, didn’t try to quell the tears, he just let her, held her, understood. The place she’d gone to, the moments she’d relived – no one came back from that right, no one came back from that anything short of terrified and mad as hell.

* * *

  
  
On the morning of the third day, they decide they have to move. The stims have done all the work they can, and to use the third would be a waste just yet. They are neither of them well or healed, but Deacon’s arm has at least set itself and the deep purple of that elbow has begun to fade. The extended corner of Nora’s mouth has knit itself back together, letting her move her jaw without threatening to tear her cheek open anymore. The entirety of their swelling has mostly faded, but that seems to be the extent a single stimpak can accomplish on their broken bodies.  
  
There’s no food left in the apartment. They had found a few cans of Cram and a beaten up box of candied apples and had feasted like starved dogs, scooping their meal into their mouth with dirty fingers and maneuvering the stale, sticky taste of the Dandy Boys around their tongues. It could have been dirt and it would have tasted like ambrosia. There hadn’t been any water, but the war-torn fridge had housed a few bottles of warm Nuka-Cola, and they drank it like nectar. Too much too fast – both had been sick afterward, which only lent itself to their current hunger, their need to move on.  
  
They leave at twilight, after fishing a tote out of the upstairs closet and gathering the empty bottles, the few clothes they could find, and the blanket. They had both found a new pair of ill-fitting shoes each, Nora having to go sockless to make hers fit without cutting off circulation, and Deacon having to pull three pairs over his feet and line the souls with scraps of pillowcase to keep a grip on them. They start out down the road, tense and alert, and ease very slightly as night settles. The two agree that night-travel is best – combat is more likely with a greater field of vision, and neither of them are up to a fight. Nora is still slightly dragging a leg, and Deacon still pools little dots of blood at the corner of his mouth. Wherever they go, they decide, they need more stims. They have no caps between them, and hold little hope of medical attention from a professional, though neither of them say so. It’s a sickly little thought they can feel in one another.  
  
They travel only a bit more than a mile before they have to stop, and they both know it’s a shameful pace for them. On a good day, before – well, _before_ , they could clear ten miles in a relatively combat-free day. Now they are out of breath and stumbling into a gas station – not a Red Rocket, they note; they must still be pretty far out from the commonwealth – using one another like crutches. Nora takes point with the pipe pistol, and Deacon takes her knife. It’s a poor defense, but they can’t risk being caught any less than prepared to their fullest. A pair of molerats forces them to use a bullet, though Deacon manages to take down the second close-quarters, earning a few painful bites on his forearms in the process.  
  
There are no stims here. There's barely anything at all – most of the interior has been ripped to shreds, and the backroom’s stock has been all but cleaned out. They recover half a box of Sugar Bombs and go thirsty for the night, huddling together in the stockroom and sleeping badly in turns. When the sun starts to set over the station, it happens. They are jostled roughly from their rest and dragged out of the back room by dirty, calloused hands. They scream with throats sore and accustomed to the sound, and they are met with bestial growls and laughter.  
  
The small group around them consist, as far as they can tell, of dirt- and oil-smeared men, their armor hodge-podge and their demeanors like the serrated edge of a hidden knife. The pair put up what fight they can, but a boot to Deacon’s chest calls forth another spurt of blood between his teeth, knuckles crunching beneath another rough sole and switchblade kicked out of his hand – though not before he lands it hard in the foot of a less suspecting raider. Nora manages a clear shot of the pipe pistol while the group is distracted, and though this earns her a kick to the face that splits her tongue, filling her mouth with blood and turning her vision to purple clouds, she smiles darkly at the strained voice crying “my fucking knee!” some distance to her left.  
  
A few more fists and boots catch their prone bodies – the pistol spinning away noisily across the broken road – before anyone speaks again.  
  
“There’s Med-X on the cart, quit shitting your pants.”  
  
“My _fucking knee_ has a _fucking hole_ in it!”  
  
“Tell Mandy,” the first, gruff voice spits, and there come the sounds of a body scrambling slowly and painfully off the ground and away. There are still at least eight legs surrounding the wounded pair, and as Nora’s eyes re-focus bit by bit, she can see a set of gnarled, grinning teeth hovering above her. The voice speaks from this creature’s mouth, and it feels like pins and needles in her veins. “Her first,” he announces, landing a toe in her side so hard she can feel a rib shift out of place.  
  
There are leering, greasy laughs of agreement from the rest of the crowd, and one calls out, “Dibs on Ginger.” The voice above Nora sneers, scoffs, and lowers its body into a crouch next to her. “All yours,” it says.  
  
She feels his eyes on her, and bile rises in the back of her throat. Suddenly she knows this man, knows who and what he is, knows what he will do – what he will encourage to be done to the both of them. And Deacon seems to know, too, because his hand finds hers and she can only just turn her head to meet his eyes. He doesn’t look away. His focus is on her. He is here. He is _here_ , and though it is all that he can give to her – especially given the foot still pinning itself against his chest and occasionally pressing down to coax out a little more blood – he gives it all to her. Every inch of what he has.  
  
Nora leaves. She is gone, and he watches her eyes die as the fabric of her bloody shirt is carelessly split by the edge of a blade. He watches her face go dim as the figure over her crouches, breathes hot and stinking against her neck. He watches her limp body jerk, watches even as the toe of that boot on his chest slides down to apply uncomfortable pressure between his thighs.  
  
He doesn’t hear the cry of “what the _fuck_ ,” but he watches the wide spray of blood paint the exposed side of Nora’s face. He _does_ hear the shouts that follow, the three subsequent gunshots, the brief struggle, the last shot, the distinctive, lifeless thud of falling bodies. He watches the figure hovering over Nora fall, blood flooding from several new, small holes in his torso, against her chest.  
  
“Holy shit,” a woman breathes, voice shaking, “holy shit.” Small hands heave the bloodied shoulders off of Nora, rolling the body away with an adrenaline-fueled stream of terrified curses. “Holy shit,” the voice chokes again, and it is followed by the sound of retching. When the unknown woman returns, hovering over the sprawled pair, she coughs through the last of her gags. “Are you – is she – hey! Are you dead?”  
  
Something in this brings a flicker of life back to Nora. She sputters, spits blood and a fragment of tooth, which Deacon sees her immediately collect and pocket. She sits up, looks blearily at the woman in front of them, who is still clutching the short shotgun in white-knuckled, shaking hands.  
  
“You,” Nora rasps, and Deacon struggles into a seated position. “One of them?”  
  
“I –” The woman’s entire body is shaking, but Deacon can’t hear a lie when she speaks. “Yeah but – Jesus, fuck, I didn’t sign up for this shit.”  
  
Nora stands, body somehow suddenly foreign and unwieldy. By the time Deacon manages to get to his feet, she has already retrieved both the pistol and the knife from the small scattering of bodies around them. When the woman with the shotgun tries to speak, Deacon shoots her a look that silences her, even in his badly battered state. Nora stands over her attacker, stares blankly down at him as he gasps against the shotgun spread riddling his chest, cocks the last bullet of the pistol and plants it directly into his forehead. The sound of the shot rings out louder than anything Deacon has ever heard. But it doesn’t startle him half so much as the scream she lets out after a minute, crumbling to her knees and, pistol tossed aside, takes her switchblade in both fists and with forceful, overhead downswings, stabs the blade home in the death mask that stares up at her.  
  
They watch a woman spend the last of her energy on this act of violence, and when the last remaining raider starts toward her, Deacon actually reaches out, grabs her arm, squeezes as menacingly as he can in his weakened condition. So they let Nora drain herself to tears, sobbing and stabbing, until she is simply a hunched back above the mangled pulp of what had once been a face. Deacon moves quickly, yanking the raider behind him so he can keep an eye on her. After dipping back into the station, he returns with their scavenged tote in his free hand. Finally, he releases the raider, digs into the bag, and retrieves the thin blanket. He hangs it gently over Nora’s shoulders, but he doesn’t call her to her feet. He doesn’t pull her away. He lets her cry and crouch. He lets her mourn and rage. When she finally stands, he offers a hand, and when she pulls in close he wraps his arms around her and lets her cry until her throat is raw again, lets her beat weak and bloodied fists against his back, lets her claw and fight until she stills, hanging heavy against him.  
  
“I –” But the woman doesn’t have time to finish before Deacon rounds on her.  
  
“You got a cart?”  
  
“What? Yeah. Well, it was Saw’s but—”  
  
“Like a caravan?”  
  
“Uh – yeah. Got a radstag to pull it. Listen, what—”  
  
“You know the Commonwealth?”  
  
“I’ve – I know where it is?”  
  
“Okay.” Deacon turns to the woman leaning against him, shifts under Nora’s weight just enough to catch her eye. They exchange some heavy, silent conversation, and then he turns his attention back. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Mandy.”  
  
He looks at her, really looks her, and sees her for what she is. Some kid, some runaway more than likely, probably not even twenty with big wide eyes and bad aim – not that you needed very good aim at close quarters with a shotgun. Her face is white as a sheet, there are tracks of tears in the grime on her cheeks. He knows Nora will forgive her, will understand, will rationalize the behavior so she doesn’t have to harbor more hate, so Deacon resolves that he will not. He will hold onto that anger, and he will use it like a too-tight leash. He will _not_ forgive this kid. Not for this.  
  
“You got supplies? Stims?”  
  
“Just some Jet and some Med-X.”  
  
“Fine,” Deacon sighs through grit teeth and the lingering taste of blood. “Fine. You’re gonna take us to the Commonwealth, you got it?”  
  
“I don’t—”  
  
“You’re gonna _take us_ in your fucking radioactive sleigh and deliver us like Christmas presents and you’re going to do it as fast as you possibly can.” His voice is stone. Her face is a picture of confusion and terror. He relents – only a little, and only for the sake of the kind of woman he knows Nora to be. “You can take us to Goodneighbor. Little slice of a town, we know the mayor. He can set you up with a job and maybe protection. _If_ you take us there. Fast. _Now_.”  
  
On the cart, bundled under the blanket and amid a rag-tag haul of weapons, scavenged foodstuffs, rattling ammo and a first-aid box, Deacon slides the needle of the Med-X syringe into Nora’s unflinching arm. Then he immediately jerks, looking down to the sudden prick of pain in the crook of his elbow to find her hands, sneaky as they ever were, around their last Stimpak, feeding its contents into his veins with as much of a smile as she can muster. “Got ya,” she manages sleepily, and his heart breaks all over again while the recent bites on his forearms begin to close. He watches her terrifyingly swollen, red eye drift shut as she settles against him. Even shielded by its lid, the eye is bulging in a worrying fashion. He remembers the slice of tooth she’d spat out, and absently tongues the gaps in his own gums.  
  
They peel out of the small, ruined parking lot in a confusion of hoof beats and rattling cargo. Deacon spares only a second of a glance to the carnage they leave behind: The faceless raider, his three accomplices spread around him, the man with a slug through his knee crumpled next to where the cart had been parked, and another – one he vaguely recognizes as the boot through which he’d plunged Nora’s knife – discarded nearby, blood coating his neck and pooling beneath him. It would have been a relatively clean job worth complimenting if he didn’t currently harbor such absolute _hatred_ for the young woman in the driver’s seat.  
  
They mostly sleep for the next handful of days. Mandy, to her credit, barely rests, works the radstag harder than she probably should have, only stopping when the beast threatens to fall over from exhaustion. She doesn’t speak much, but Deacon catches her glancing frequently to Nora with a kind of recognition that churns his stomach despite his steadfast despair of her. When night settles over their third day, and he can see more familiar territory blooming around them – their days, he calculates, must have been at least eight hours of hard riding; with the time they’re making, they might even arrive tomorrow night – and Nora curls into the inner corner of the cart’s flatbed with a fresh (and their second to last) dose of Med-X, Deacon finally stirs.  
  
He carefully makes his way over the clutter and into the space beside Mandy at the helm of the rickety vehicle, and she tightens her grip nervously on the makeshift reins. She looks at him out of the corner of her eye, but when she catches him staring right back, returns her attention to the darkening road ahead. They sit like this in silence for a while, and he not-quite-secretly enjoys the nervousness he instills in her. He won’t forgive her, he reminds himself. But, he supposes, that doesn’t mean he can’t spare her some sympathy.  
  
“They do it to you?” It’s a heavy question, and it hits her with the according weight. She flinches under it, and remains silent for a little while, expression tortured.  
  
“They – called it initiation. I was – I was the only girl. I figured – I don’t know. I didn’t see a way out. I thought it would be…”  
  
“Just you?”  
  
Silence settles between them again. They jerk around a little with the movement of the cart, and Deacon allows himself a moment of appreciation for the ingenuity of taming a radstag for a pack animal – far faster than a brahmin, though perhaps less hardy. Still, speed counted for a lot on the open road.  
  
“You saved our lives,” he acknowledges after a while. It is not an entirely grateful tone, but he knows the fact deserves its due.  
  
Mandy glances over her shoulder to the sleeping, swollen, still bloody figure of Nora tucked under her blanket. When she speaks again, her voice is a familiar kind of lifeless, and it brings to mind that haunting image of those dead eyes locked on him while Nora made herself disappear.  
  
“No. I didn’t.”

* * *

  
  
  
“Bullseye.” She didn’t stir, and Deacon swallowed the lump in his throat. “Nora.”  
  
It was her name that shocked her into attentiveness, and she stared up at him, wide-eyed and frightened. Deacon pressed her reassuringly into his side again, frowning. “You – you’ve gotta talk to somebody about all this.” He looked down, clearing his throat. “Probably we both do.”  
  
“I can’t tell—”  
  
“Not _them_ ,” he interrupted, desperation cracking his voice. “Not – not me, not anybody like that. Someone who can help. You can’t – it’s eating you up. It’s like – it’s happening all over again, all the time.”  
  
Nora fell quiet, curled a little helplessly against his side, and stewed like that for a few minutes. He didn’t interrupt, he knew better than that. He wasn’t telling her anything easy, and nothing exactly kind.  
  
“I know,” she sighed eventually, and the way she slumped her entire weight so suddenly against him brought Deacon to a cold, immediate kind of fear. “I’m so tired, D.” The toneless, emptiness of her voice brought that fear home in his heart, and he gripped her tight, half turning toward her to gather her to his chest. “I’m tired of waking up with your teeth in my hands. I’m tired of – of smelling his breath. I’m tired of always being _there_ , even when I’m here.”  
  
Deacon nodded into the crown of her head. He understood, far too well, the exhaustion that came with the nightmares; with the cold sweats that broke out on the back of your neck when something shuffled behind you in an alley; the searing memory of pain that rose to the surface at the sight of a nail, a set of pliers, a staple. They rested that way until the sky was tinged with orange, and Deacon insisted that she eat. He didn’t try to coax her off the roof – she was safe here, and he was happy to let her shroud herself in that feeling. But he left to retrieve dinner, though he paused with one leg slung over the broken window blockade. “I’ll send Nick up with it?”  
  
He felt the thickness of the sudden, sharp silence rise between them like a muggy heat wave. It wasn’t somewhere he’d normally poke his nose – well, he would definitely _snoop_ , but he wouldn’t intervene. But – god, he’d seen them. He _knew_ them. And he knew Nora – knew her to his bones, like his own arm. Knew that ache she felt far too intimately – knew it in the way the ghost of his own ache clung to him wherever he went. He’d lost, but she – well, she still had a chance. If she could find something good in this fucked up world, after everything, then she deserved an opportunity to hold onto it. He wasn’t above being a pushy big brother about it.  
  
“Okay,” Nora answered after a moment, and he released a breath he’d been clenching. With that, he offered her a goofy smile and disappeared into the tower, making a bit of a production of the bumps and thumps of falling inside. Her ghost of a little laugh warmed him like good whiskey, and he made his way downstairs at last.  
  
Fahrenheit, like the phantom mind reader she’d always proven to be, met him at the base of the attic stairs with two plates, hot and heavy with the weight of a cut of meat. He opened his mouth to inquire about the menu, but the woman shook her head sharply. “Don’t ask,” she advised, and he decided that for once, he wouldn’t pry. Instead of turning right back around as the room seemed to assume he would, Deacon faced the sofas that each bore a man, one relaxing into his latest hit of Jet, the other chewing agitatedly on the end of a long since burned-out cigarette.  
  
“You’re up, metal man.” The smile was supposed to be reassuring, but he registered annoyance in Nick’s expression. He was pleased with that, too. Never could get rid of that rascally streak.  
  
“What?”  
  
Deacon offered one plate toward the detective at the end of an extended arm, giving it a tiny shake when this gesture didn’t seem to get the message across. “A growing girl’s gotta eat. You’re playing delivery boy.”  
  
Nick stood, but nervousness had visibly taken hold of him. A metal hand rubbed at the back of his head with surplus anxiety-born energy, tipping his hat to a silly angle in the process. Deacon’s smile grew. God, did he know Nora. And Nick – well, if it had to be anybody, Nick wasn’t a bad choice. A good choice, even. Hancock had been right. Probably about more things than Deacon wanted to consider, but at least about his assessment on the pair. Nick was falling over himself already, like _he_ ’ _d_ done something wrong. Nora was safe, just like she had been in the field with him. And, Deacon knew all too well, Nick was considerably safer with Bullseye at his side. She’d grown into a deadly force not to be taken lightly. He couldn’t be more proud.  
  
“Does she even want—”  
  
“You got a wire twisted? Lady needs her dinner.” Hancock grinned horribly up at him from under the lessening fog of his high, and Nick shot a scowl in the ghoul’s direction that brought low, pleasantly rumbling laughter out of him.  
  
“She doesn’t want to see Hancock?”  
  
“I’ll see her,” John reassured almost lazily, shrugging his pinched shoulders. “She’ll be raw about it, don’t wanna give her too much too soon. We’ll work it out.”  
  
Much as the man generally annoyed him, Nick had to appreciate this good nature. He had every right to be upset, to be raging, even – more of a right than Nick had, to be sure. But he was easy, calm. He didn’t give a damn. He _understood_. Nick wondered again if it was his synthetic nature that separated him from this full kind of comprehension. It had always been a barrier for him in some respect, and much as he liked to believe – much as she liked to _encourage_ his belief – that she was the exception, he couldn’t douse the doubts.  
  
She’d _recoiled_.  
  
“Hey.” Deacon was suddenly close, and Nick realized he hadn’t exactly been occupying the here-and-now for the past minute or so. A plate was being shoved gently but firmly into his hands, and a man was grinning sympathetically up at him from behind his sunglasses. “Don’t think too hard about it, okay?” He had to reach up to pat Nick’s shoulder, making it a slightly awkward gesture. “Think with your heart, tin-man.”  
  
“That make you the scarecrow?” It was an instinctive barb more than it was genuine, but it brought sporting laughter out of Deacon.  
  
“That title probably goes to our illustrious mayor here. I like to think of myself as a – _lyin_ ’ kinda guy.” He seemed delighted by the groan this earned him, and Hancock piped up from the background, demanding to know what any of this meant.  
  
“Story time!” Deacon declared, spinning away from Nick and plopping down onto the sofa next to the mayor. He tossed an arm around the ghoul after settling his own plate in his lap, and Nick did not miss the way John leaned into that gesture, nor did he miss the ever-so-slight pause this gave Deacon. He smirked. Maybe he’d share his suspicions with Nora.  
  
His partner. They always traded notes, shared evidence and information.  
  
Nick’s resolve renewed, and he made his plodding way up the steps. He muffled the laughter and aggravated sounds of confusion below by pulling the stairs up after him, and stood to glance around in the dim. Deacon had spent too long up here for it to be empty, and yet…  
  
With the kind of note-accuracy available only to the self-tunable voice, he whistled a beckoning duo of notes. After nearly a minute, he heard a faint, sputtering response and couldn’t help his smile. She always was a horrible whistler.  
  
He didn’t risk trying to carry the plate out through the hole that was far too much of a struggle for his stature, so Nick held it out instead, and waited until it was gingerly lifted from his hand. The warmth of her fingers brushed against half-numb metal, and he absorbed the distinct way she didn’t flinch like water to a sponge. It reignited him.  
  
Carefully, he sat just to the side of the brick-framed window, remaining inside the tower and stretching his legs out in front of him from the creaky chair he’d dragged over to support him. Habitually, he fumbled in his pocket for the gifted pack of cigarettes. “How you holdin’ up, kid?”  
  
He let the silence stretch out between them, but he couldn’t pretend it didn’t put him more on edge with each passing moment.  
  
“I hurt Hancock.” Nora’s voice drifted through the half-bricked window, soft enough to break his heart. He felt himself suck in a needless breath. And what could he say to that? It was a cold, naked truth – a knife of a phrase.  
  
“He’s all patched up,” was all Nick could come up with. The tense silence stretched out again.  
  
“He taught me how to do it. How to use a knife like that.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“And I used it against him.”  
  
He stayed quiet. He lit his cigarette, took a drag to get it started, and then offered it at the window. Her hand reached out eventually, and he watched her fingers wrap around the filter, lingering against his own for just a fraction of a second longer than necessary. The smell of smoke blew in from the darkening evening, and he listened to her breathe for a little while.  
  
“I’m all fucked up.” There was a watery laugh in her voice, and he turned his head with the instinctive urge to reach out to her, to at least look at her. But he kept the wall between them, let her stay just out of his sight.  
  
“Out here?” Nick’s humor was dry in his tone, and his voice was tight. It was hard to placate with harder truths. “We all are.”  
  
“Guess I lost that shiny new appeal.”  
  
“How do you mean?”  
  
“Remember that talk you gave me?” The nostalgia in her words was palpable and wistful. “After – after that group in hangman’s alley, when they tried to surrender?”  
  
Nick frowned. He remembered vividly, though he tried not to. It was the first time he’d felt real fear for her – for the preservation of her. She had looked so cold behind that pistol. He knew she had a reason – a hell of a good one. He was standing over the bodies with her, he could see how young they were, how defenseless they had been. Ill-prepared and barely armed and trying to make their way to the great green jewel. But the boys on the other side of her gun were young, too. And their hands were in the air.  
  
He knew she had her reasons. Good reasons. Knew much more poignantly when he’d first met Shaun, how alike in stature and form he’d been to one of the smaller, mangled bodies. He understood, now. But at the time, it had scared him. He was watching the Commonwealth sink its teeth into her, and he wanted to stop it – to save her.  
  
She never really needed saving. Hell, she _did_ the saving most of the time.  
  
“You talked about seeing what the Commonwealth does to people. Told me you didn’t want it to get me, too.”  
  
Had he always been so dense? Why did Nora seem to occupy his singular, permanent blind spot? Nick felt himself tense at the recollection of his own words. He’d been swallowing acid at the time, had been scolding himself for so boyishly hoping to preserve the last vestige of a world he didn’t even technically belong to. Now he was berating himself for being so damn selfish. Maybe it hadn’t been right, when she pulled that trigger. But it hadn’t been unforgiveable. It hadn’t been without cause.  
  
“Took it to heart, from what I remember.” Nick said it bitterly, but at the time he had been overjoyed. He had lit up when he caught her looking at him before launching into a firefight, considering him and his influence before making a hard decision. It thrilled him. He had preserved her, he thought. He’d kept her whole, and he’d been able to do it with a gentle hand. And now it was coming back to bight him in his stupid ass.  
  
“I tried.” He heard her blow out another cloud of smoke, ached to be this separated from her, stiffened against the wall that separated them. “It got me.”  
  
“Nora…”  
  
She laughed and choked and he knew she was crying. Again. Because of _him_. Synthetic down to his core. Couldn’t even muster enough humanity to be soft to the woman he –  
  
_Tin-man_.  
  
He swallowed. “You know what I remember?” She didn’t speak, but her silence had a draw to it, so he pressed on. “Must’ve been…maybe a week later?” Nick fished around in that packet again, retrieving another cigarette for himself, taking a moment to examine how bent it had become in either Hancock’s careless storage or his own nervous manhandling. “Back in the city. You’d been out of town a few days.”  
  
“…with Deacon.” Recollection rang in Nora’s voice, and suddenly her air was hungry. So, obligingly, he fed her the rest.  
  
“Probably your – third, maybe fourth op with the ‘Road. Didn’t like to see you gone for so long back then, but you’ve always been stubborn.” She scoffed, and he smiled. “You came waltzing into the office, pretty damn pleased with yourself.”  
  
“It was a good op,” Nora related, a new, slight pleasantness in her voice. “Got a lot done.”  
  
“So you said.”  
  
“That’s what you remember?”  
  
“Not exactly.” He took a long drag and blew it out in a thoughtful haze. “It was the first time I ever saw you in a dress.”  
  
She laughed, and it hit him like a blessing. “ _That’s_ what you remember?” Nora repeated, and he drank in the renewed delight in her voice.  
  
“It was a nice dress.”  
  
Silence settled over them again, but in a way so sorely familiar to Nick, it was far more comfortable. Eventually, she stirred from her side of the wall, and he could make out the hissing sound of a stubbed-out cigarette.  
  
“I wasn’t supposed to keep it, you know. The dress. It was a disguise, but…” She hummed thoughtfully. Careful as ever with her words. “I hadn’t had a dress since – before. I know Deac didn’t want me to, but I don’t think he had the heart to tell me so. So, I kept it. Only reason I was wearing it that day—”  
  
“You didn’t know if there’d be a special occasion to pull it out again.”  
  
“Well remembered, old man.”  
  
“I don’t have to take that kinda lip from a frozen banana.”  
  
“You cut me to the quick, Valentine.”  
  
“Only if you ask nice.”  
  
The new tension in their sudden quiet was not plagued by discomfort. There were small smiles, indulging in the shared secret of such frank talk between two people who had only ever used their words to dance around one another. And, in a way, it was still a dance. But they were closer together now, each pressed into the other and humming in one another’s ear.  
  
After a while, he heard the gentle click of a plate settling onto the roof, heard her shift, thought for a moment she might be making her way back inside, but then she spoke, still on the wall’s far side. “Why do you remember that?”  
  
“Fishing for compliments?” Nick tried lightly, but she’d never put up with his shit. Sometimes she was so shrewd about it – too shrewd. But he paid her back in kind. She’d said, once, it was the glue that made them good partners.  
  
“Nick.”  
  
“You looked…” He trailed off, grumbling, accidentally letting ash fall into his shirt collar and making a quiet fuss over clearing it out. But she waited, patient as she always was, and the silence pulled him in. “It was the dress you wore, that day on the beach.”  
  
“It was a special occasion,” she recalled softly, and then: “So why don’t you remember the beach?” _Too_ shrewd.  
  
“You been taking lessons from Doc Amari?”  
  
“Deacon thinks I probably should.”  
  
The weight of that thought settled abruptly on his shoulders, and he grimaced. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been harboring the very same sentiments, but it wasn’t – he hadn’t meant to bring it up now. If he was honest with himself – which tended to be the only case in which he was decidedly _dis_ honest – he wasn’t sure he’d have the courage to bring it up at all. He knew Nora, held no misconceptions about her fragility or her strength. But she was hurting, and that was just as much a truth as her indomitable personality. He wasn’t equipped to help her, but somebody out there would be. Every kind of wound had a doctor.  
  
“You think I should, too,” Nora translated his brief silence, and he cursed himself inwardly. “You’re both probably right. I just—”  
  
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”  
  
“I don’t _have_ to do anything, Valentine.” He could hear the smile in her voice, but it still stung like the artful crack of a whip. “You ever take into account what I might _want_ to do when you’re busy winding yourself up?”  
  
“I’m automatic. No winding necessary.”  
  
“ _Nick_.”  
  
He sighed. _No bullshit_ , he’d heard her say to Deacon – not often, but enough. It was the same inflection she put into his name. No fancy two-stepping around the question. No cleverly bantering his way out. “I – what you want – doesn’t make sense to me.”  
  
“Well that’s nothing new.”  
  
“Now who’s cutting?”  
  
“Oh, come on, _detective_. It’s the first lesson you ever taught me about cases. We always start at square one. We always start—”  
  
“With nothing.” He couldn’t help but chuckle. It wasn’t his best line, but when she’d first started to dig into him about proper detective work, he’d felt on the spot – he could _be_ a detective, sure. Damn good one, if he would ever be so bold. But how did you teach that?  
  
“So what does the evidence tell you?”  
  
“I know,” Nick almost groaned, rubbing his forehead in irritated helplessness. He wasn’t good at this – he’d never been good at intimacy. Keeping others at arm’s length was how he survived. She’d been the first real wrench in those works, and she was too stubborn to pry herself out. “I know what’s – what I’m being told.”  
  
“Think it’s a lie?”  
  
“I think it’s…ill-advised.”  
  
“So then it’s the truth.”  
  
“Not all truths are good.”  
  
“Not all poets are fools.”  
  
“What?”  
  
She laughed warmly, and annoyed though he may have been, he felt the tightness in his chest begin to loosen. “Quoth the Poe.”  
  
He vaguely registered this, and grumbled – why was she allowed to do a jig around a premise while he was forced to shoot straight? “You’ve been spending too much time with Deacon.”  
  
“No argument here. But I mean it. It’s a logical fallacy.”  
  
“Practical or classical?”  
  
“I love it when you talk nerdy.”  
  
Nick had a bark of a laugh when he was genuinely surprised – it was hard to catch him off guard with humor, and the too-loud crack of his unintentional laughter made her heart beat itself silly against her ribs. He so _rarely_ laughed that way. Nora found herself pressing up against the brick, straining for every last drop of that sound. He cleared his throat, and she sighed just loud enough for him to hear.  
  
“Classical,” she answered at last, running the knuckle of her index finger idly over the rough wall above her shoulder. “The undistributed middle. _Non distributio medii_.” She could hear the whirs of processors kicking into a more active state, and smiled while he combed his databanks for reference.  
  
“The Purloined Letter.”  
  
“Knew you’d have read it.”  
  
“Bit on the ancient side.”  
  
“You can’t resist a good detective story.”  
  
“You got no proof, shamus.”  
  
“That’s sort of what I mean,” she chuckled, and he caught the sight of her fingertips absently edging around the hole in the bricked window, peeking out just beside his head. “It’s a classic syllogistic problem. Dupin deduced that the priest was a fool because he was a poet, and all fools are poets.”  
  
“But not all poets are fools,” he echoed, absently shaking another cigarette out of the packet. It had so often been this way for them – easy talking, easy laughing, easy company in the late nights at the office, exchanging evidence and information and quick-witted jibes over open case files and ashtrays. The familiarity of the sensation bloomed inside him like the first, shy embers of a rekindled fire.  
  
“Not all truths are good,” Nora confirmed, tracing circles on the brick just next to his head with absent-minded fingers. “It’s the right conclusion to the wrong problem. The undistributed middle. Factual, maybe, but contextually irrelevant.”  
  
“Not like you to break out your fancy education like this.”  
  
“Only for you.”  
  
He panged. He ached. She breathed like it was a labor to sit still. Nearly two years of cozy, frustrating, stimulating office-nights stretched between them and he couldn’t keep his head above water, couldn’t fight his way to the shore.  
  
“So the truth is relevant,” Nick pressed on, “but its goodness isn’t.”  
  
“Now you’re a regular Auguste.”  
  
“Always thought of myself as more of a Marlowe man.”  
  
She laughed again, weak but heartfelt. “Of course you are.”  
  
“Nora—”  
  
“Tell me about the dress, Nick. Tell me – anything. Tell me something true.”  
  
He heaved another sigh, and filled a few minutes with yet more silence and smoke. At last, when he spoke, he felt his throat tighten around his voice, threatening to crack it under the nervous pressure. “I – don’t think I’ve ever really seen anything beautiful in the commonwealth, before. Seen lots of things – amazing, unbelievable, downright impossible, sure. Sometimes even good. But it was like – I’d been blind, I guess. Like I hadn’t seen you before. And I thought – how could I have missed something that beautiful?”  
  
The lull that dragged itself out began to twist at his nerves, and eventually he prompted her with a gruff, “Too corny?”  
  
“No.” Her voice was quiet, and that only tensed him further. He hated this, when he couldn’t get a read on her. It was what made her exciting, sure, but it was dangerous. Like standing too close to a land mine. You feel more alive than you ever have the second you hear those beeps. And if you’re not fast or clever, or if you’re just plain unlucky, it could be the last time you ever _do_ feel alive.  
  
“Tell me something good,” she continued at last, doing nothing for his worries.  
  
“You’re my best friend.”  
  
It came out before he could think better of it, and it was followed by a hoarse, self-deprecating laugh. He wasn’t ashamed of it – of her. It was the way it made him feel so distinctly like a schoolboy with an impossible crush. Could he even remember school? Childhood? And yet the sensation was so real and raw he could feel it prickling in his synthetic skin. She still wasn’t speaking, and he found that for once, he couldn’t stop.  
  
“When you were gone, god –” Nick half-laughed again and rubbed exhaustedly at his forehead with the plate of his smoking hand, careful to hold the cigarette at the very end of two extended metallic fingers “—and then you were back and it was just – it was like seeing you that day, in that dress. Like everything went from black and white to color, and I was – I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t believe it, I thought – I _really_ thought…”  
  
She gave him yet more silence, and what could he do? Time to see if he had that soul after all. “It was always the best, with you. Had other partners, damn fine detectives, but it was – smooth, with you. Ellie was pushing the idea to really put your name on the signs and I wanted…” He gestured helplessly with his good arm, a man hooked at the end of a long, long line. “It was – good. Better than – never had it so good. Part of why I never – why I didn’t – I just wanted to keep you.” There. He had aired it, the selfishness he cultivated for a handful of years. His voice was suddenly heavier than he could lift, and he felt himself sag against the wall at his back. “And I knew I couldn’t, so I just – pretended. And you were always there, every night, every time we had to drag ourselves across the ‘Wealth. Ready and willing, always game. Loved that about you.”  
  
He paused. Bit his tongue. But back-pedaling wasn’t in the cards anymore. Nick had launched himself headfirst into this, and it was sink or swim.  
  
“Love that about you. And then you were back and it was – you asked me to pretend and I – did. Too much, maybe. I wanted to be angry, I was mad as hell. But you were _there_ and I had just – missed you so damn much…”  
  
This time, he couldn’t really fill the silence she provided. “Say something, kid, I’m drowning here.”  
  
He heard her stir, heard her let out a shaky breath. Then, so quietly it damn near tore him apart: “Are you still mad?” He could have laughed if it didn’t feel like he was breathing needles.  
  
“No. I’m just sorry.”  
  
“What? Why?”  
  
Again, Nick gestured expansively toward the dim room in front of him. “Everything? For putting you in this situation.”  
  
“Nick…”  
  
“Done a lot to train myself out of high hopes. For me, anyway. Just – seeing you again. Threw me for a loop. Old dogs and all that.”  
  
“You think – what – you forced me into—”  
  
“No! No—I—god I hope not. I just – shouldn’t have. What you’ve been through—”  
  
“Oh god, _fuck off_ , Nick Valentine.”  
  
His mouth dropped open, wordless. She’d never – well, not to him. He didn’t have long to wallow in stunned silence, though.  
  
“You of all people – you don’t – think I can make my own decisions? I went to you _first_ because – you weren’t supposed to – not like – yeah, I’ve been through hell. I’m all – fucked up because of it. I’ve been through hell before.”  
  
“Not like—”  
  
“Turn your worry mode off for a second and listen. _I_ know what happened. Whatever you think you know – you weren’t there. Hell, Deacon wasn’t even really there. We were – they kept us in separate cells. Next to each other. But they made us – go through it alone. So I _know_. I just –” Nora laughed like a woman trying to keep from sobbing “—I just _attacked_ my friend. One of the best men I know. He’s been nothing but good to me and I—” She choked back a strangled, horrible sound, and he didn’t realize his cigarette had been reduced to ash until the bud of its dying flame hit his leg and made the fabric there sizzle.  
  
“I came to you first,” she repeated, voice barely above a whisper. “I thought – I thought for sure you’d be angry. I kind of wanted you to be. Because I wanted – I knew you’d treat me like a person. A whole person. I didn’t – I didn’t want to tell anyone. I didn’t want anyone treating me like – someone different. Like I wasn’t the same or – like I wasn’t ever going to get better.”  
  
Nick wanted to tell her something comforting, wanted to pacify her, wanted to say things like _it takes time_ and _you’ll pull through_. But the truth had his tongue before his heart did, and instead he said, “You won’t.”  
  
“I – what?”  
  
“It’s not…” He shifted uncomfortably, easing his way into entirely unfamiliar territory. “I don’t know exactly what happened to you. I can’t even imagine, and frankly, I don’t want to. But something like that doesn’t just – leave you. You don’t recover. You cope.” He heard her shift against the outer wall, but when she didn’t reply he simply continued. “Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s not – mine. Not really _mine_ , but everything that happened to the old Nick – everything he tried to do to deal with it – it’s still up here.” He tapped his temple with an in-tact finger, forgetting for a moment that she couldn’t exactly see the gesture. “Not a whole lotta happy memories from that guy. Plenty of flashbacks, though.”  
  
After a long while, he heard her sniff. “God. I’m just being shitty, aren’t I?”  
  
“No more than the rest of us.”  
  
“That sounds dangerously close to pity.”  
  
“Sympathy, more like.”  
  
Nora sighed, and he could practically hear her fold into herself. They sat like this for too long – night had well and truly fallen, leaving little light within the tower to see by. The city never slept, but its bustling had quieted considerably, and not much neon shone from this corner Goodneighbor. Eventually, Nick stood to make his way over to the unlit lantern. He’d barely taken a step before he heard her shift frantically from the other side of the wall.  
  
“You leaving?”  
  
“Hm?” He couldn’t help smile, despite the sudden panic in her voice. “Nah. Just gettin’ some light in here.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Why?” Nick continued a little recklessly over the click of his lighter and brief hiss of the kerosene igniting in its glass case. “’Fraid you’ll miss me?”  
  
“Don’t tease.” But her tone was lighter, easier – not as lively as he could remember it being, but a good sight better than just a few hours ago.  
  
“Now where’s the fun in that?”  
  
Nora settled somewhat at the sound of his chair creaking beneath his weight once again, letting out a little relieved sigh that sent some component spinning out of time with the rest of him. Being needed, that he was used to – he was a staple in Diamond City for a reason. But being _wanted_ …that was still new, and incredibly novel.  
  
“Don’t start something you can’t finish, Valentine.”  
  
It was the strange, dark smile he could hear in her voice that caused him to shift in his seat, and he cleared his throat in some leftover human instinct. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“Just what I said. Two can play at teasing.”  
  
“Now that’s not – I didn’t –”  
  
“You always step up to the plate with no intention to swing?”  
  
“ _Now_ who’s teasing?”  
  
“Mm.” He could hear her move subtly, thought he could make out the rustling of fabric, and then she spoke again, and he felt the bottom of his world crack beneath him. “Tell me about the dress.”  
  
His tongue felt like a lead weight in his mouth. “What about it?”  
  
“After that day in the office. Did you think about it?”  
  
He tried not to hear the smoke in her voice, closed his eyes to the hook dangling at the end of her question, put so much effort into clearing his mind that he couldn’t respond.  
  
“Did you think about _me_ in it? Did you think about what was underneath?”  
  
He could have choked. And _god_ , she knew what she was doing – and he was helpless to it. Metal fingers curled under his chin to form a rest, and he dipped his head beneath the shadow of his hat’s brim despite the emptiness of the room around him. Nick could only listen to her talk – phrasing it all in the form of leading questions while she painted a far-too-clear picture for him. Hands sliding up her calves, thighs, pushing the fabric of her dress around her hips. Pulling the zipper down her spine with painful slowness. Sliding the sleeves down her shoulders, feeling her hands—  
  
And then she made a sound, and his entire world fell away. He couldn’t just see her question-inflected fantasy now, he could vividly picture _her_  – just as she was, clear as day, sliding her fingers under the hem of that shirt – _his_ shirt. She talked, and all he could do was listen, fans kicking up into a furious whir every time her voice pitched, her breath caught, her sighs extended too long. It wasn’t until he startled himself with his own groan that he realized he’d been palming himself through his trousers.  
  
“You’re _killin_ ’ me, here.”  
  
The music of her laugh brought a mechanical shiver through the steel column of his spine, and then Nora was in the room, standing over him, knees grazing his and body forming a silhouette against the soft lantern light. His head cocked back to look up at her, and his hands moved to her hips with minds of their own. She immediately flinched and withdrew, and he was all emphatic apologies.  
  
“We should stop,” Nick concluded, and she shook her head, gathering her breath.  
  
“No – just…” With just a moment of hesitation, she gingerly wrapped her fingers around his wrists. When he put up no objection, she lifted his arms, gently pinned those wrists to the wall on either side of his head, and sank down over his lap. She hovered this way for a few minutes, watching him for reactions just as intently as he watched her for instruction. Then her lips were on his, and the action was full of hunger on both sides. Her hands found their way to the gaps in his neck, strangely emboldened, and when the warmth of one fingertip curled around a wire his entire body was afire, and he was gripping her thighs again.  
  
She very nearly growled, and he lifted his hands like a man at the losing end of a gun as she pulled back. “Sorry,” he was almost babbling, “sorry, we can st—”  
  
“ _Just_ –” Nora huffed, but remained where she was “—here.” She knotted her fingers under the loop of his tie and pulled it free, and even as she performed the action, understanding was dawning on him. If he had hair, it would have been on end. He found himself leaning forward before she even had to ask, and by the time he was resting his shoulders against the wall again his wrists were fastened together at the base of his back with that worn strip of fabric.  
  
It was a funny thing, to be touched without the possibility of reciprocation. Not unpleasant, though perhaps a little frustrating. But he thought he understood, at least vaguely, and he was powerless but to provide. Her thumb had hooked into the corner of his mouth, pressed against his tongue and vibrated with the moan she coaxed from him. That wire in his neck was subjected to another tug and his body jerked up inadvertently, pressing his hips into hers with an unfamiliar kind of desperation.  
  
She swallowed the noises he made, pinched and probed the exposed sections of his body, brought him repeatedly to some unseen edge only to leave him chasing her mouth with his own, flexing his shoulders up to reach her, nipping at the fingertips she teased around his lips. Her breathy laughter cut through him, the weight of her hips against his was searing with heat, he was practically whining by the time her hand slid down between their bodies and curled around him.  
  
“What does it feel like?”  
  
It was a simple enough question, innocent enough, but in her mouth and soft against his ear it was suddenly, thrillingly filthy. And then that finger of hers crooked around that wire again and he was subject to a spasm, mouth hanging open and electricity running frantic sparks across his mechanical mind.  
  
“Shock baton.” Nick struggled to provide even that much, his twisting thoughts knocking against one another until he could rethink the sentiment enough to add, “In a good way.” And then it was her _mouth_ at the opening his neck, her teeth on that plucked wire, and he could feel the heat of his own power shock her like a tongue on a battery. She groaned, wriggled, and he couldn’t keep still beneath her. There was some kind of intimacy in having her play a component in the completion of his circuit – something in feeling what powered him travel _into_ her – his mind was a fog, his voice was a stilted staccato, and the soft heat of her body was burning through him.  
  
It wasn’t that he was a total stranger to lust and desire. Even before he’d considered Nora in a more physical way, Nick had flashbacks of his namesake’s life. A lonely life it may have generally been, but it was not entirely absent of pleasure. But it was all secondhand, all half-remembered – it had never involved _him_ , his synth body, his confused and half-broken self. On the occasional, uneventful night when he had decided to explore those memories, those human sensations, it had still been flesh and blood and Jenny. And it couldn’t possibly compare.  
  
“Nick?”  
  
His attention snapped back to the moment under the strain of so much sensory input, and he could taste that thumb in his mouth again, his lips closed around it like they were housing a prayer. Her other hand had withdrawn from his roughly opened trousers by a small margin, and he found his hips canting to follow it without direction. But the look on her face caused him to still, and she slipped that finger from between his lips to trace a soft arc over his chin.  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“It’s – always gonna be like this, probably.”  
  
“Like…?” That was the thing with feedback loops. It became increasingly difficult to wrangle his processes into line.  
  
“Weird,” she explained softly, straightening up a little. “And – not…easy.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So you don’t have to stay.”  
  
He might have laughed if it hadn’t taken all his processing power to align himself to the moment. Instinctively he moved to reach up, to wrap his arms around her, but was met with the immediate resistance of that tie around his wrists. Not that he couldn’t pretty easily break free, but that felt – inappropriate? Unnecessary? She had wanted assurance that he wouldn’t lay hands on her, and he was happy to give it to her. The restraint was just enough of a reminder to him to keep from giving into instinct, and he could appreciate its purpose. She knew the extent of his strength, too, and made it obvious by the little smile that curled onto her lips at the sight of his arms twitching unconsciously for a moment.  
  
“You wanna untie me a sec, here?”  
  
“Not really.” Her smile was growing, and he could only chuckle.  
  
“Fair enough. But c’mere then.” Nick craned his neck up toward her, and she obediently leaned down so he might draw her into a brief, surprisingly chaste – given the moment – kiss. “You think I wouldn’t leave if I wanted?”  
  
“I think you’re more interested in being nice than in self-preservation.”  
  
“Hey, now. That’s doctoring the evidence.”  
  
“How?” Nora chuckled a little helplessly, resting her forehead gingerly against his.  
  
“How long have I followed you into danger and back out the other side?”  
  
“That doesn’t disprove anything.”  
  
“Point of order, your honor?”  
  
She laughed in earnest, cupping her palms around his neck with a feather-light touch, curling her fingertips gently against the base of his skull. “You may proceed.”  
  
“There might be a conflict of interest between the counselor and her case.”  
  
“Is that so?”  
  
“Ever heard of being too close to the source?”  
  
“This from the P.I. who invests himself in every case he takes on?”  
  
“I’m not the one litigating, here.”  
  
“Consider yourself a character witness, then.”  
  
“Might be a conflict of interest there, too.” He shifted a little beneath her, drawing her attention briefly to their position, and the activities that had brought them here, and she laughed again, pressing a gentle kiss against the corner of his mouth.  
  
“Fair point. Off the record, then?”  
  
“Off the record,” he echoed, catching her lips briefly again, “I like to think I’m not the type to walk out on someone.”  
  
“It’s not walking out if I’m giving you permission.”  
  
“Bull.”  
  
“I don’t – want to trap you here, Nick.” Her tone had taken on a serious element, and he felt himself stretching up to press against her, to provide her the sentiment of pulling her to him without the use of his arms. “I know you. But you’ve already done right by me. You don’t have to stick around to try to pick up my pieces. They might not even all be there.”  
  
It was his turn to laugh, a little weakly, but it brought a confused wrinkle to her brow. “Look who you’re talking to. Don’t exactly have all the pieces, myself.”  
  
“That’s not what I mean.”  
  
“But it’s the truth.”  
  
“Who was it that said ‘not all truths are good’?”  
  
“Objection – hearsay.”  
  
She chuckled again. “Sustained.”  
  
“Listen. I’m not gonna pretend I know how this should work. There’s – a lot on the table, here. Not just from you. We’re not so different, really.” The absolute grin that suddenly took hold of her expression caused him to halt, raising surprised barely-there brows. “What?”  
  
“It’s just – I think that’s the first time you’ve ever talked about yourself like a person.” Her fingers were curling fondly behind his ears, tracing the edge of the gap on one side, ghosting over the exposed hinge of his jaw in a way that caused the joint to twitch just slightly.  
  
“Yeah, well,” Nick managed to gather his grousing tone, “what can I say? You’re a bad influence on me.”  
  
“Not too late to kick the habit.” She smiled, and he leaned involuntarily to the warmth of her palm.  
  
“You kidding? Can’t even stop smoking.”  
  
“Mm. Always did like the look of a man with a cigarette.”  
  
“No foolin’?”  
  
Nora laughed again, nosing into his in-tact cheek, earning a happy little sigh of breath he didn’t need. “Never flirted with a man who wasn’t smoking. Might have been a bit of a problem when I was younger.”  
  
“Lucky me, then.”  
  
“You’re about to _get_ lucky.” She smirked into the corner of his jaw, lifting his chin with the action in order to brush her teeth against the edge of a gap in his skin.  
  
“Promises, promises.”  
  
She planted a hand on the wall to the side of his head, covered his mouth with her own, inhaled the ashtray taste of his groans, rocked the back of his chair against the wall. She was not precisely gentle, but he muttered gentle things in her ear, brought her with him back to the edge and over, filled her with soft promises and the familiar, welcome sentiment: _Safe, safe, safe_.  
  
They knew there would be prices to pay in the morning, knew that hard conversations and negotiations were coming. Knew that the next days would hold no reprieve for them, that the inside of the Memory Den would soon become a place of long labor. But for now, for tonight, he could whisper and she could rest, and when she fell asleep he could curl against her back, metal fingers gingerly tangled in hers, thrumming a steady beat of mechanical life against her spine. For now, for this moment, she could be safe.  
  
  
  
He doesn’t dream. Just as much as this is fact, however, he knows this isn’t real – not _really_ real. He knows because he has already lived and relived this moment a hundred times. He knows every detail. The tinny, dirty smell of the room, the gentle hum of the fluorescent lights, the silenced shot that puts down the man too busy taunting him to notice their visitors. And then that face, round and smudged with dirt and blood, peering in through that circular window; a woman on a mission and eager for her prize. She cracks the terminal at his instruction, and when she steps inside he prepares for the reaction – the brief disgust that runs through every human staring down a beaten up, chain-smoking synth for the first time. But it isn’t there, and that’s what shocks him more than anything else. More than her rescue in its entirety, more than Piper standing there at her side and grinning, more than Dogmeat prancing into the room to run a friendly circle around him and then nose into the palm of his good hand. More than anything – that look that isn’t disgust, isn’t fear or wariness. It’s something close to wonder.  
  
“What are you?” She asks, voice a little thick with a history of maybe one too many cigarettes. But not afraid, not upset.  
  
“A detective,” he says, because he can’t think of how else to respond. He doesn’t know what to do with the curiosity in her steely eyes, the fascination in her voice.  
  
“You think you knew then, mac?” The voice is behind him, slick and oily, and Nick knows it’s the Stranger without having to turn around.  
  
“Know what?” He can’t take his eyes off her. He couldn’t, in those first few minutes. All blue in that suit and fresh – fewer scars than he’s seen on almost anyone out in the Commonwealth. And smiling – _smiling_. Like he was something decent to look at.  
  
“That your whole life was about to change?” The Stranger pauses, then adds in consideration, “Existence? Runtime? Whatever you got.”  
  
“No,” Nick says automatically, because he doesn’t want this code-with-attitude to lay grubby hands on any more of his mind than he already has. Then, realizing the futility of this, he adds, “Maybe.”  
  
It’s mostly true. He knows in the first five minutes that something singular and fantastical is occurring. Knows when she sweet talks her way around Skinny that she’s a force to be reckoned with. Knows, when he looks at her under the gray Commonwealth sky and the light beat of rain and she asks him again what he is, full of that same curiosity, that same piqued interest, that she’s trouble on legs. Knows, too, that despite his better judgment, he’s always liked trouble.  
  
The Stranger is here with him, too, watching her climb out of the street entrance and draw up to her full height again. It isn’t much – she may be all legs but he’s still got almost a foot on her (which isn’t readily apparent most of the time; he’s mastered the art of hunching into a less assuming posture). The Stranger whistles, and Nick rolls his eyes. He would be lying if he said he didn’t notice that vault suit either – it left only details to the imagination – so he says nothing. He wonders if he noticed at the time – if he looked at her then the way he looks at her now, head-to-toe adoration and a helpless kind of hope. He can’t remember. Nora and her place in his world seems retroactive; all the lines of before are filled in with the colors of the now.  
  
“There it is,” the Stranger says, and it shocks Nick out of his own reverie-within-a-reverie.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Right there. When you tell her you’re a synth.”  
  
He looks. He doesn’t see it at first, the way you don’t see a Monet if you stand too close. But slowly, he realizes. That little lopsided smile of hers – the one that gives just the hint of teeth, too straight and white to be from this era. She doesn’t flinch or wrinkle her face in confusion. She doesn’t darken with that understanding he expects. She smiles, and he knows in an instant he’ll help her. Not the way he knows he’ll help most anyone who walks into his office. He knows she’s got someplace to take him, and he knows he’ll be along for the ride if she’ll have him.  
  
“Yeah,” the Stranger nods. Nick doesn’t need to look to know he’s smiling that punch-me smile of his. “You knew.”  
  
He doesn’t know if that’s true, and even if it is he doesn’t want to hash it out with this pillock. But he knows _now_.  
  
She shifts against him and the vision is gone. The attic is here, dim and speckled with limited moonlight. A hand presses to his chest and she looks up at him with sleep-heavy eyes. He watches her watch him, vaguely smiling.  
  
“You looked like you were sleeping,” she says.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Do you dream?”  
  
He has to think about it for a moment. “Sort of.”  
  
She lets her cheek rest against the whir inside his chest again, and he is happy to lay here not-quite-sleeping next to her, one arm slung around her comfortably.  
  
“Was it a good dream?” She asks, already drifting off again.  
  
He smiles, traces a thumb gingerly over her shoulder. He says, “The best.”


	12. Left Me Appalled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> heyyyy, surprise, i'm not actually dead, and neither is this fic! writer's block hits hard and long. but here we are, hopefully back in the swing of things!

_Why were you so surprised  
that you never saw the stranger?_  
  


They made love that morning. Her sleep had been fitful as it usually was, and though she did not wake in a panic from her nightmares, she rose in the pale blue of pre-dawn to kiss him gingerly. It had been gentle at first, but then he had been allowed to touch her, and suddenly every action was filled with a heated urgency on both sides.   
  
When he teased her about it later, as she crossed the room draped in his shirt and sporting his hat, she merely shot him a smile and a shrug of one shoulder. “Making up for lost time,” she said, and he smirked.  
  
Nora fished out the beat up and discarded packet of cigarettes and slid one into her mouth before setting about searching for a lighter. It didn’t help that most of their clothes were tossed carelessly into forgotten piles – they hadn’t been very neat in their eagerness for one another. At last, when she felt familiar, cool metal in her hand while digging through a pocket, she returned, seating herself at the end of the bed (really just two twin mattresses pushed together on the floor), just out of his reach.  
  
“So what do you do while I’m sleeping, if you don’t?” She spoke around the obstruction of the cigarette as she lit it, indulging in a relaxing drag before leaning forward to pass it to Nick. He noted she kept herself tilted slightly back at the waist, even in this gesture – damn set on playing keep away with his hat. Normally that might have frustrated him, but here in the private light of almost-morning, it merely made him chuckle.  
  
“Power down,” he answered, blowing a playful stream of smoke above her head.  
  
“You turn off?”  
  
“Not completely. Just the primary active functions – sight, real-time processing, speech. It’s like sleeping, I guess.”  
  
“Is that how you dream?”  
  
“Sort of. It’s more like – recompiling memories.”  
  
“So you’ve never had a completely original dream? Nothing you haven’t already been through?”  
  
The question seemed to puzzle him, his vague brow-lines knitting as he passed the cigarette back to her. He knew what dreaming was, for the most part. Knew it by explanation, by logic and reasoning. But even the old Nick had dreamed mostly in horribly familiar nightmares. There wasn’t a lot of experience there to draw on, and this body, he was sure, had never experienced an original dream. Hell, he’d rarely used his low power mode before, preferring instead to remain active and as old-fashioned in his problem-solving as his mechanical existence would allow.  
  
At last, he asked, “Have you?”  
  
“…not anymore.” She buried the sad sort of look on her face in another drag of smoke, but he caught it just the same and frowned. When Nora reached out to pass the cigarette back to him, he stretched further toward her and seized her wrist instead, yanking her unceremoniously toward him. She laughed, and settled against him, barely complaining when he plucked that hat off her head and returned it to his own.  
  
They talked for a while longer, laughed for a while longer, shifted skin over synthetic skin and soaked up the novelty of one another a while longer. He meticulously counted the spattering of small moles on the curve of her neck and over her half-exposed shoulder (five, and he stared until he could map their constellations perfectly), she studied his arm with its half-exposed metal skeleton (radius and ulna approximations, she noted, already so like a human even in his early generation), and they burned the cigarette out between them. When orange streaks of light speared through the open brick-window to nudge them fully out of sleep, she had snatched his hat again and pulled it down to cover her eyes, pillowing her head in his lap.  
  
Nick ran a metal thumb over the curve of her bottom lip, the slope of her round little chin, watched her smile under the touch and relax – _really_ relax. Like she was safe. Like she was home. When she spoke on the other side of his utter absorption, it nearly startled him, and it took a moment or two to process her question.  
  
“You think Shaun’s all right?”  
  
He might have chuckled at this needless kind of worry if he didn’t know the weight behind it, the pain she kept locked in her chest as she asked from behind the safety of his hat’s brim.  
  
“That kid? Tough as nails.”  
  
“He shouldn’t have to be.” She sighed, and he threaded his fingers through the tangle of hair at the back of her head.  
  
“It’s that kinda world these days.”  
  
“No – I mean – he can handle the world. I’m not – worried about that.” She paused, chewing the inside of her cheek for a moment of thought. “Which probably doesn’t make me much of a frontrunner for mom of the year. But – he _has_ to be tough. Because of me.”  
  
“I think maybe he _can_ be tough because of you,” Nick countered, giving the back of her head a comforting little scratch.  
  
“You kidding? I’m not there half the time, and then I’m just – gone for a year. Don’t even come back right away. And he has – he has so much to wade through, you know? Sometimes I think taking him in was selfish of me.”  
  
His brows furrowed, and he used a metal knuckle to flick the brim of that hat further up her face so that he could point that _none-of-your-shit_ stare right into her eyes. “You think giving a kid his mother is selfish?”  
  
Nora laughed, and it was an empty sound. “I mean – the ‘Road could have set him up with a good family. It wouldn’t be so…complicated with someone else. I just…” She turned her head slightly away, and he let her ruminate in silence for a while, still combing through her hair. “I fought so _hard_ to get him back. And then – after everything it – it was like finding him again. He gave himself to me. Gave me a chance to _raise_ my boy. To keep him from…” She shuddered, but he understood.  
  
She’d been a fully-realized Railroad agent before she’d made it into the Institute, and as such had seen firsthand the kind of horror that organization could inflict. And then she’d seen the man behind the mechanism, and her child had been stolen from her all over again. She hadn’t talked much those first few days after her return, but Nick could vividly remember that night on the roof. He could practically see it like a tangible, physical thing: The way she sat hunched over the edge of the shingles, legs dangling over her somewhat repaired home in Sanctuary. The way she looked so defeated and lost – so lacking that purpose and fire that had been driving her when they’d first met. The way his chest ached with things he couldn’t, wouldn’t say – didn’t understand, himself.  
  
“Not a lot of room for simple in this day and age,” Nick managed at last, and she turned her eyes on him again with a grateful, albeit tired smile.  
  
“I know.” Nora sighed again, with a desperate kind of chuckle chasing the exhale. “Today, especially. Any minute they’re gonna come knocking.” She closed her eyes against the impending storm of the inconceivably complicated, twisting her lips into a pout. “But it’s simple up here.”  
  
“Mm.” It was a noncommittal answer at its best, and a caveman’s excuse for conversation at its worst, but he couldn’t shake the smile on his face. In many ways, she was right. Up here, with only each other for company, things weren’t exactly easy but they sure as hell weren’t as hard as the world below. He’d heard of this phenomenon, he vaguely recalled. The novelty of newness could form a peaceful bubble around you, and the shock of the real world bursting through was a devastating blow you wanted to put off as long as possible.  
  
“ _Mmm_ ,” she teased, adopting a falsely deep tone fit to mock him, and drawing herself onto her knees. “I’m _Nick Valentine_ , shynth of little wordsh and littler payshensh.” The overblown, bad-Bogart flavored impression made him chuckle despite himself, though he wouldn’t be _him_ if he took that sort of lip lying down.  
  
“Sounds nothin’ like me.”  
  
“She walked into my offish all legsh and problemsh, trouble in a tight dresh.”  
  
“Wasn’t that tight, if memory serves.”  
  
“She ashked me for my shympathy and a shigarette, and I wash all outta shmokes.”  
  
“You _ever_ seen me all outta cigarettes?” He had his hands at her hips by then, in a lazy way, even as she struck what she apparently thought was a particularly cheesy detective pose, half-cocked back and looking down through the shadow of his fedora.  
  
“Of all the agenshies in all the shities in all the world, she walksh into mine.”  
  
“That’s not even a detective flick.” His fingers had ducked into the curve of her waist and she wriggled at the tickle of it, quickly pulling back and up to skip just out of his reach.  
  
“You’ll never catch me alive, copper.”  
  
And maybe because he was just so damn happy to see her playful and bright again, maybe because she was mostly legs in that shirt of his, or maybe because she’d always had a way of picking the lock to his easy side, he pursued. He had waited a moment, allowing her a second of false confidence in the idea that he wouldn’t play into such games, and then with all the precise speed his body could calibrate, he was scooping her around the middle and backing her against the far wall. Nora was a squeal of laughter and dancing feet, attacked on all fronts – his fingertips goosing over her ribs, his lips blowing raspberries against her neck, one hand eventually popping open the scant few buttons that kept his shirt closed around her and palming the bareness of her stomach.  
  
She had one leg at his hip and one mischievous finger seeking retaliation in the hollow of his open cheek when the attic stairs were yanked crashing down, a small hubbub of excited voices calling up in united worry.   
  
“Gen—Nora!”  
  
“Hey – what –”  
  
“Blue! You okay up there?”  
  
“Guys, I wouldn’t—”  
  
“We can’t afford having her run off in another fit, Deacon. We _have_ to –”  
  
“Uh – De—uh—Dez—”  
  
“Oh my god.”  
  
“Tom?”  
  
“I—uh—I think she’s okay.”  
  
Deacon and Hancock were making a valiant attempt at crowd control, affording Nora just enough time to duck behind Nick, yanking that shirt closed around her with a snort of laughter that kicked up an embarrassed rush of spinning fans under a synthetic chest. Below them, Desdemona stood shoulder to shoulder with Tinker, both Preston and Piper just behind them. At the fore, Dogmeat’s claws click-clacked against the floorboards in a nervous dance, and he whined pitifully from the base of a ladder he could not climb.  
  
“Oh—oh.”  
  
“I _tried_ to tell ya, boss.” Deacon could barely contain his own snickering, and even the glower on Nick’s face – poised above them as he was, all singlet and still only half-buttoned trousers – could not stifle it.  
  
“I didn’t realize—”  
  
“We thought we heard a scream,” Piper was trying to explain as Preston abruptly turned his back, clutching at his rifle like a life preserver and going dark with flush up the back of his neck. Meanwhile, Hancock was howling with mirth from somewhere in the background.  
  
“We’re _fine_ ,” Nick practically seethed, doing his best to ignore Nora’s unrelenting, trapped laughter in his shadow.  
  
“I’ll say.” This was Cait’s unmistakable lilt, and she pressed herself into the little group to leer unapologetically up into the tower. “Could do with a bit less machine and a bit more Nora.”  
  
“Tickets are all sold out, Cait,” the woman in question called from behind Nick, and he rolled his eyes from within a very clear _don’t-encourage-them_ expression.  
  
“Bullseye—”  
  
“I’ll be down in a minute, boss.”  
  
“I – all right, then.”  
  
With more than a little grump to his demeanor, Nick pulled the attic stairs home, effectively cutting off the small gathering down below. Nora still laughed helplessly at his back, and he harrumphed audibly rather than scold her. As she eased into quieter chuckling, she snaked her arms around him, resting her cheek against his spine and sighing in a way so painfully close to happy he felt some mechanism within him skip like a missed heartbeat.  
  
“See? Complicated comes a-callin’.”  
  
He relaxed a little against the weight of her body on his, letting his good hand rest affectionately over her forearm. “Mm,” he echoed, and this caused another brief fit of laughter that she buried into the back of his undershirt. He turned in the loop of her arms to rest his chin on the crown of her head, after scooping up his hat again and returning it to its proper perch.  
  
“You don’t have to—”  
  
“Doesn’t matter. A job needs doing, and I’m the best tool for it.”  
  
“Used to be I knew a gal who’d chew my ear for talkin’ about myself like that.”  
  
“Sounds like a regular harpy.”  
  
“Ah, she had her good points.”  
  
Nora smiled into the closed side of his neck, lingering there a moment longer before pulling herself back with obvious reluctance. “Probably should get dressed.”  
  
“Unless you wanna give ‘em a good distraction.”  
  
“I _am_ pretty distracting.”  
  
Nick issued some kind of guttural sound, good hand slipping behind her and cupping in such a way that her hips were dragged against him, and she erupted into another little spasm of laughter.  
  
Eventually, the pair descended into the room below, once again fully clothed. Dogmeat was the first to greet Nora when she hopped off the last step, unabashedly lifting to his hind legs and bracing his weight against her. She indulged him, as she had always done, and crouched to the floor so that he could comfortably roll to his back and she could apply a much needed, long overdue belly rub. It was almost funny, Nick thought – how she could be so gentle and kind with this animal, you’d never know both were far more than capable of killing a man and had the individual body counts to prove it.  
  
Desdemona and Tom turned toward the room from the corner they’d been crowdedly occupying in whispered conversation. Knowing and regretting that time had come at last to stop putting the world on hold for herself, Nora stood and nodded to them, though she kept a hand against the hard bulb of Dogmeat’s head as he snuggled up into the touch.  
  
“Bullseye,” Dez greeted in that deadpan professional tone of hers – a sure sign that she was at the end of her patience.  
  
“Debrief time?”  
  
“Yes.” But there was a caution in the way the woman spoke, and an unreadable tension spread outward into the room.  
  
“Let’s give you guys some space,” Hancock declared at last, throwing his arms up invitingly so as to usher the small crowd out. When he caught Nora’s eyes, those arms sagged just a little, so that instead, almost imperceptibly, they were an invitation to _her_.  
  
Her chest tightened. She searched the skin laid bare by the rolled-up sleeves of his coat and shirt, noting the slightly pink tints popping up in places under that tightly wrapped bandage. John caught this, however, and dropped that arm a little lower still, keeping his other held out in a gentle lure. A silent moment passed, a world stretching the space between them infinitely – a chasm of a choice she could barely see across. And then she was a blur across the floor, and then in his arms, which the mayor wrapped around her in a warm squeeze.  
  
Nora clutched at the back of his coat, face buried in the top of his shoulder. They were very nearly the same height, and Nick noticed this as if for the first time. He wondered if Hancock could turn off that kind of internal tallness, if he could lower it like a guard and let someone in on equal ground. He thought he could see it now, and in spite of himself, he felt a nagging little bloom of respect for the mayor. He watched John tighten his grip around Nora, watched them press a lot of unsaid things frantically into one another – that, at least, he could relate to. Hancock was a smooth talker, but he was nearly as bad at frank, verbal intimacy as Nick himself was.  
  
“Hey, it’s all right, Sunshine,” he heard John murmur against the woman’s temple. “I get it. I do.”  
  
He _did_. Nick was sure of it. Loose as the ghoul’s morals may have been by comparison, his traumas were born in the attempt to do good just as Nora’s were – and likely they had, at least at one time, been just as severe and close at hand. Hancock didn’t get where he was – or become _who_ he was – by traveling an easy road. Again, that flicker of respect flitted around the back of Nick’s mind. It wasn’t that he wholesale disliked John, it was just…it was a similar sort of dynamic as the early days with Skinny. They didn’t agree often, but there was a kind of stiff understanding there. What had Malone said? Enemies were the closest they could get to friends?  
  
There was a whispered plea from Nora, a placating mumble from Hancock, and when they broke apart there seemed to be a dim new understanding between them. Nora’s eyes were glassy, and John’s face was as soft as Nick could ever remember seeing it. She did that to people, it seemed. It wasn’t always a softening. Sometimes she hardened a person, or deflated them. But John had been right; she was a harbinger of change wherever she went.  
  
“All right.” Hancock clapped his hands together, issuing his command jovially. “Everybody out or I’ll gut ya!” The grin on his face stole a small smile from Nora, and it wasn’t until the troop had all left that Nick realized he’d suddenly become the object of attention.  
  
“I’m afraid I need to speak to Bullseye alone.”  
  
“Hang on—” But Nora was interrupted by a metal hand on her shoulder, and the gentle squeeze it applied there.  
  
“It’s all right. I have a few things to catch up on around town.” Then, turning to Desdemona: “You think you can spare her by tonight?” It was casually phrased, but his voice was iron. Nora didn’t know whether to roll her eyes or kiss him. _Men_. Some things never changed, no matter the wrapping paper.  
  
“Late, probably,” was all Dez could offer him. At last, he shrugged, gave Nora’s shoulder another, slightly longer squeeze, and then retreated from the room after the others.  
  
Silence filled the space, until Dez spoke again. “That means you two, as well.”  
  
It hadn’t even occurred to Nora – or Tom, or Deacon, by the looks on their faces – that _alone_ really meant alone. It seemed understood that ‘alone’ was usually code for ‘agents only.’ Apparently Deacon had assumed the same, as he opened his mouth in a tell-tale windup for a smartass objection, but Desdemona cut him off before he could even set up the play.  
  
“I _mean_ it. No negotiating. We’ll come get you when we need you.”  
  
Deacon looked a little frantically between the two women, trying not to see the assuring, permissive expression on Nora’s face. “Fine,” he relented at last, tossing his hands up in defeat, “you got it, O Illustrious Leader. I’ll just put myself on standby ‘til you need to power me up again.” But he left, despite his obvious indignation, and his hand tangled ever so briefly with Nora’s as he followed Tom down the stairs.  
  
Silence filled the all but empty room for a minute before Dez moved to take a seat on one of the couches, holding an arm out to the other more in command than invitation while her free hand patted her various pockets in search of a cigarette. Nora hesitated – this was all feeling strangely intimate for even the most severe of dressings-down Dez could give. But the woman merely snatched a match into life, puffing a few starting clouds of smoke while she waited. So, at last, Nora sat, more than a little on edge already, Dogmeat nosing his body under her legs until he installed himself as a sort of footrest, and sighed himself into a nap.  
  
For a long time, Dez merely looked at her, hard and unwavering as her stare had ever been. It wasn’t so much that which unnerved Nora – she’d been on the burning end of that glare before. It was the distinct lack of…anger. No disappointment, no tension that came before an onslaught of _what-were-you-thinking_ s. If she didn’t know better, she might have thought there was something like pity in those eyes.  
  
“I had a wife.”  
  
The statement’s suddenness and softness was enough to shock her, but its contents had Nora’s mouth hanging open. Dez was never open about her personal life – never anything but the staunch and stern leader of the Railroad. A leader who took advantage of her agent’s stunned silence to continue her story, while she leaned forward to ash her cigarette into a tray on the table between them.  
  
“I was young. Younger, I suppose. Raw recruit for the Railroad. We were dealing with a particular set of bigots at the time – anti-synthetic gangs, really. Raiders with a uniform hate of what they didn’t understand. Just as destructive, just a little more focus. I was in your position, back in the day. A heavy.” This didn’t surprise Bullseye in the least, but it did bring a small unconscious smile to her face – of course Dez was a heavy. She certainly had the demeanor for it. “Before that, though, I led a much simpler life. Sam actually introduced me to the ‘Road, and they took me on for training at her insistence.”  
  
“We were doing well. It was a bit of a renaissance – we’d just established another safehouse on our farm, we were moving synths at a pretty high rate. Comparatively, anyway. Had a solid line set up as far as the Capital Wasteland. Sam was a frequent tourist bordering on promotion, we’d settled down in a little shack together, and I was…” The pause that took hold of Dez made Nora’s stomach sink. She understood that kind of bitter nostalgia far too well. “It was the high point of my life. Is it that surprising?” This was asked with a small smile, and Nora belatedly realized she must have had her face screwed up in mild confusion.  
  
“No – I just mean. Marriage, these days…”  
  
“It probably doesn’t mean the same thing. It’s definitely not handled the same way, from what I hear. Not a lot of use for legal bits of paper out here. It’s mostly just a promise.”  
  
“That’s what marriage boils down to. Or, should have done.”  
  
“You don’t wear your ring anymore.” It was a casual statement, emphasized by the laziest gesture of Dez’s two fingers holding that cigarette, but it felt like a cold knife.  
  
“No.” Nora absently fingered the emptiness of her left ring finger. She hadn’t worn it since that night on the roof – since Nick had helped her… Well. It had been a long time. And then, because she was feeling a little invaded by such an impertinent observation, and because she never had much of a sense of self-preservation, she added, “Neither do you.”  
  
Desdemona let out an empty beat of a laugh and hooked her free thumb into the collar of her shirt. A moment of rustling later, and she tugged out a chain Nora had never seen before, dangling from which was the dull glint of a well-worn, gold band. Her stomach dropped, and Nora felt her jaw clench. Was this really what this _talk_ was about? Some kind of – of all the –  
  
“I’m not here to tell you how to honor any promise,” Dez interrupted as though reading Nora’s thoughts, sounding more sympathetic than anything else. “Especially not you. Everything you’ve been through – all the loss you’ve faced – nobody has that right. Except, I suppose…”  
  
“What is this about, Dez?”  
  
“I want you to know that I’m not coming at you blind to the circumstances, and I’m not speaking from lack of experience.”  
  
“Experience with _what_? You don’t normally beat around the bush, Dez. Kinda puttin’ me on edge, here.”  
  
Desdemona sighed, finally leaning forward and resting her forearms on her knees. She stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray before leaving it discarded there, using that same hand to comb her hair back like a woman on the edge, herself. Nora didn’t know whether to sympathize or worry all the harder. This really _wasn’t_ like Dez. Secretive, sure, that was part and parcel for the Railroad. But indirect? Not in all the time she’d known the woman.  
  
“The first big bust on the Railroad came about four years before we moved to Switchboard. And it was my fault.”  
  
Uncomfortable silence fell, Nora picking absently at the knee of her jeans, Dez staring fixedly at her crumpled, spent cigarette in its ashtray.  
  
“It wasn’t exactly standard practice to station trainees or steady tourists so far outside HQ. But Sam – with the circumstances…” Desdemona sighed again, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “Sam was one of the earliest synths to stick around. She didn’t get the procedure, but she hadn’t been trained. And we were…” She turned her face away, and Nora ran cold. She could already feel where this was going – that stiff tone, not at all unlike Deacon’s when he tried to wrap his voice around the truth – and she found herself hoping it would stop. “Pinkerton was adamantly against it. I think that’s part of the reason he set me up permanently outside of HQ. But Sam – she was the smartest person I’d ever met. So good. I figured it was _because_ she was a synth – she was innocent. That kind of good didn’t survive in the ‘Wealth for long. It was…precious.”  
  
Images of Shaun, both young and old, crashed together in her head, and Nora had to fight off a wave of nausea. The world was so _complicated_ now, as much as it had been stripped down to the bones – people were inherently complicated, and people were all that was left. And somehow, Shaun, whose whole existence was a thing of precarious complication, was the simplest – the best of them. Bright and innocent and _kind_ , so kind – had she ever been that kind? She couldn’t remember. But she thought she understood Dez, and her heart ached for it.  
  
“There was…an attack. An accident.”  
  
  
  
It was still early enough that the Third Rail lacked a considerable audience. Magnolia was a little more casual than she would be for her late show, and was currently letting the radio provide the music for her while she sat at the bar and flirted absently with the cockney bot doing less than his best to move the grime around on a glass. A customer or two took up a shadowy corner here and there, either asleep from the night before or here to drink their lunch.  
  
They gravitated to the same center, just as Nick had known they would. He might as well have even waited in the predicted location – it was a private enough place for all of them to be with one another, again, in the shadow of Nora. She’d swept them all up from far flung corners of the Commonwealth and pulled them together again, so here they were, arrivals slightly staggered, until they filled up almost the whole of the VIP room at the back of the building.  
  
Nick was the third to plod down the stairs, passing Magnolia with a little wave. She winked in his direction, then darted her eyes quickly towards the VIP door. She’d always been a good informant, and he’d always been grateful for how subtle she could be. Maybe that was why he’d been taken so off guard – this was oddly outlandish for such a capable woman. His gaze followed hers, and he watched the empty portion of a couch through the VIP doorway. He paused for just a moment, raising a questioning brow in Magnolia’s direction, but she merely brandished that small, dazzling smile she had and turned back to the bar-bot.  
  
There had been a shuffling sound just as he stepped over the threshold, though at the other end of the room Deacon and Hancock sat on strangely far sides of the sofa. A pair of sunglasses were ever so slightly askew, a set of scarred lips were curving smugly under half-closed, black eyes. Nick thought better of mentioning anything – though he also made sure to archive the moment, smirking slightly. He knew a certain woman who would probably flip her lid if offered this particular bit of information (he did his best not to think of it as ‘gossip’ – after all, partners were supposed to share evidence, right?).  
  
He took up a post by the door, leaning back against the wall after accepting a cigarette offered by John. The lighter he clasped his hand around in his pocket turned out to be Nora’s rather than his own, and he found himself smirking. She had always been a distinctly solid, predominant presence in his life, and it was…a warm sort of feeling, seeing her daily habits intertwining quietly with his own. Domestic, maybe. Like that breakfast, like seeing Shaun off to school. And _that_ , perhaps, was the most frightening part of it all: It was a homey, comfortable feeling – a human feeling. It couldn’t possibly last, could it? This wasn’t the sort of life Nick was allowed to have. This wasn’t his lot in synthetic life. He thought of the attic, of the invisible bubble neither had wanted to burst. Was it selfish to enjoy it while he could? Was it kinder to dissolve it himself rather than wait for it to be taken from him?  
  
“Thinkin’ pretty hard over there, Nicky.” John’s smile was highlighted with the barely visible, acrid puff of Jet that drifted out between his lips. “Watch ya don’t overthink anythin’.”  
  
Nick was already resenting this – had he become that obvious, that readable? That was a human thing. He was supposed to be still and cold and incalculable by observation. But here he was, undone by a dame and being read like a cheap menu by the damn mayor of Goodneighbor. His souring expression earned him a laugh from both parties across from him, and just as he opened his mouth to reply, Piper and Preston swept through the door, one speaking animatedly while the other smiled in a kindly tolerant sort of way.  
  
“Told you this is where they’d be,” Piper punctuated the end of her conversation in that only slightly smug tone she put on whenever she was right about – well, anything. She established herself on a free sofa cushion, smiling rather knowingly at Nick as her arms crossed and Preston stationed at the opposite corner of the room, as though by habit. Always a soldier, always a guard. It might have been more admirable if it didn’t make him just stiff enough for the rest to poke fun at. Hell, it looked like Piper had given him a few good ribbings just on the way here. Nick _could_ have felt more guilty about it – it probably would have made him a better person – but it stood out so starkly against the truth: They all needed Preston. He was a steadfast friend, a brilliant tactician, and he had one of the last truly good hearts left in the ‘Wealth. Of all the people he’d met, Preston outwardly appeared most undaunted and undeterred by the wastelands.  
  
It wasn’t true, of course. They all knew that, too. Preston came with as many scars as the rest of them. But he radiated with a kind of unrelenting hope – which, really, Nick considered, played a large part in Nora’s magnetism. She represented some lost ideal, and her willpower to hold onto as much of that as she could was lethal at worst and astonishing at best. She had her fair share of scars, too, but that was part of the gravity. When it came down to it, a woman of mild local legend was aggressively _just_ a person. She wasn’t unreachable or esoteric at her center. She was just a woman who fought to keep a tight grip on the best of herself, and she had enough determination to cast an alluring sort of spell on anyone in her company: The suggestion that you could do that, too; that you had goodness in you _worthy_ of holding onto.  
  
He wondered if that was such a fierce trait in her before the war. He often wondered things like that. How much did she miss that world? How much of her would always live there? How much of her stayed behind? Nick used to feel nervous about that piece of Nora – the part that would never really come with her to the Commonwealth, that may have never left that vault or the last moments in her home. It made her someone all the more unattainable – made him deserve her all the less. Everything about him was a dirty result of this world, of those bombs, of the chaos that came after and the cobbled-together humanity that remained. That part of Nora – that part kept her from giving in. It was that hope, the anchor at the center of that perseverance that pulled you into her wake. He couldn’t, _wouldn’t_ try to pull that part of her in for himself. He couldn’t risk it. More than once, it had turned him sour and sullen, trying to resent her for the pedestal he had built himself. Now he just hoped desperately that piece was still there, safe and sound and barefoot on that silly shag carpet she’d told him about.  
  
“Yeah, that’s the look of a tin-can in love if I ever saw it.”  
  
Nick dislodged from his calculated daydream at the prompt of that Irish lilt. He blinked Cait and MacCready into focus, meeting her shameless grin and his begrudging smirk with a raised set of brows.   
  
“Hm?”  
  
“Said yer a million miles away. That’s what love’ll do if ya don’t watch yerself.”  
  
“What?” His surprise hardened his tone a little, which prompted a laugh from the room at large.  
  
“Ah, c’mon, Nick.” Piper had her hands splayed in a conciliatory gesture, though her smile betrayed a greater sense of evil delight than of regret. “You can’t spend four nights tucked up in that attic with Nora and expect us not to grill you on it.”  
  
“Not givin’ you any headlines, Piper.”  
  
“Please! I wouldn’t use you and Nora as a headline, that’s tacky!” Her delivery was so earnest that Nick felt abashed for all of a second before she added wickedly, “I’d use it as a human interest column. Much more appropriate.” She paused while the room briefly filled with snickering, and considered her words a little more carefully. “People’s interest?”  
  
“Just cover it as an antiques exhibition. That’ll cover all your bases.” Deacon’s smile was back at full wattage, but he was very decidedly _not_ looking at Hancock, who was nonchalantly watching the agent without any sign of reservation.  
  
“ _Ain’t that a blast from the past_ ,” MacCready intoned in a deep-voiced impression of the detective, which set the room alight with laughter again, more full and genuine than before.  
  
“Hey now,” Preston admonished, doing his best to keep relative composure, “we should still respect our elders.”  
  
Nick rolled his eyes dramatically at the next mirthful outburst, leaning heavily against the wall and sucking moodily at the filter of his cigarette. He had expected to end up in this position, though he’d rather hoped Nora would be with him at the time. Their ragtag little family wasn’t really any tamer in front of her, but she was fairly quick on the draw in matters which would normally fluster him. He had a thick hide when it came to himself and his humanity (or lack thereof, according to the common passing insults), but somehow when it was directed at Nora – when it was about… _this_ – it tied his tongue. And this bunch’a wiseasses were going to take full advantage of it.  
  
“So?” John called over to him when the room had grown a little quieter. “How’re you and Sunshine makin’ out?”  
  
“Probably had to teach him how,” Cait suggested, thoroughly amused.  
  
“Oh, I don’t know,” Deacon interjected, donning a dramatically thoughtful tone. “From the sounds of things, he picks up _quick_.”  
  
“All right, all right,” Nick finally waved a hand to put a lid on a can of worms before it got well and truly opened, “c’mon, let _her_ alone, at least.”  
  
“What, not even a little hint?”  
  
“Aw, Nicky, give us _something_! Paint us a word picture!” That smile on Piper’s face was bordering on illegal, Nick was sure of it.  
  
“Are we painting?” The round, French-touched question seemed to carve out a space for Curie to occupy, and she appeared in the doorway as if walking behind her own voice. Hancock immediately held out a fond arm toward her, and she scurried forward to take up the space between the mayor and Deacon. It was interesting, Nick noted – Curie had, from the moment she’d been pulled out of that vault, seemed to fill a kind of little sister role for John. Even in her robot body, the ghoul had displayed a protective kind of fondness for her, and Curie had settled delightedly into that space. It did him credit, reluctant as Nick was to give it. But he _knew_ Hancock was a good man. It was hard, sometimes, to remember why he didn’t particularly _like_ knowing that.  
  
“Nah, doll, Nick here was just gonna tell us the story of how him an’ our Nora fell in love.”  
  
Right. _That_ was why.  
  
“Oh, ‘ow exciting!” Curie cooed, bracing her hands together in sudden, sunshiney interest. “Zis would ‘elp so much with my research! ‘Ow does monsieur Valentine find love? Where are its subroutines? I ‘ave ‘ad no luck in finding zem myself.”  
  
The laugh around the room was far lighter, more good-natured this time around. Even Cait, who cut quick with some variety of her usual “egghead” remark, did so with something like fondness. Nick liked Curie well enough – she was a bit beyond him in a lot of ways, but you couldn’t spend any significant amount of time with her and not grow to like her at least a little. She had that somewhat innocent way about her, and he could easily connect the dots as to why she was so attached to Nora. Not unlike himself, either. She’d been isolated from the fallout, from the war, from – well, everything. The world was just as brand new to her as it had been for him, for Nora. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel that same kind of protective impulse in regards to the former Miss Nanny, doubly so given her evolution. He’d also be lying if he said he wasn’t just a little morose about it, too. He’d never deny Curie the humanity she had claimed, and that in itself created some uncomfortable dissonance for him. Their situations were radically similar in a lot of ways, and yet his attitudes toward their circumstances were drastically different. He didn’t like to think too much about it.  
  
“I wasn’t…” Nick tried to avoid that eager expression on Curie’s face, instead aiming a pointed glare at Hancock, who absorbed it with his nearly perpetually entertained smile. “Don’t you all have anything better to waste your time on?”  
  
“You’re kidding,” Piper answered with an expression of amused disbelief. “Diamond City’s most famous synth detective—”  
  
“— _only_ synth detective—”  
  
“—and the woman who took down the Institute? Who put down the synthetic boogieman? The story practically writes itself!”  
  
“Then you don’t need me,” he shot back gruffly.  
  
“Aw, Nicky,” Cait chimed in again, as she leaned easily against Mac’s chest, who in turned leaned back against the wall at Preston’s side, his arms looped lazily around her. “Don’t be like that. Give us a hint.”  
  
“When did you _know_?” Deacon posed the question outlandishly, clasping his hands together in a more dramatic version of Curie’s posture, adopting a lovesick puppy atmosphere.  
  
“Nah, nah,” Hancock dismissed, waving away Deacon’s words with a gesture of his hand, “that kinda thing happens gradual-like.” It was an insight that rang surprisingly true, and it must have shown on Nick’s face, because John’s grin turned up like the radio playing his favorite song. “When didja know it was _for good_?”  
  
Nick’s fans had long since kicked up into an embarrassed whir, but at this, his system hiccupped into silence. It was a bold assumption – one he would have liked to call out for its unwelcome brashness, but it was also something he couldn’t exactly deny. In spite of himself, he considered. He thought about what he’d told Nora – of the truth of it, and of the truth Hancock had provided: It was a gradual realization. It hadn’t really crystallized until later, he supposed. And then he knew, a little darkly. The moment rose at the back of his mind like a tidal wave, curling over his senses until he was at sea in the memory.  
  
“Not one to kiss and tell,” was all he could manage to say. But he felt the chill of that night air, tasted the tension in the air, saw her bare shoulders hunched like a bird with a broken wing, felt the distinct resolution that had come over him then. And he knew.  
  
  
  
  
She doesn’t really speak to anyone for at least three days. Nick knows she’s shared some brief, clandestine conversation with Desdemona, at least judging by how the leader of the Railroad gives her foremost agent a wide berth. Usually, Dez is on top of Nora and Deacon (he can’t remember the last time the two hadn’t been partnered on an op together, save of course for this most recent trip) within seconds of their return, and wrangles them into another mission by the end of the debrief. This time, Desdemona seems content simply to keep her head down and work alongside Tom and Carrington, both of whom now dedicate their time to the teleporter and some expansion it requires. Honestly, Nick hasn’t really been paying attention. He’s consumed by the ghost suddenly haunting Sanctuary.  
  
November is steadily pushing into December, and it marks just over a year since he first laid eyes on her from the other side of that vault’s window. It has taken all of them this long to reach a point of preparedness and confidence fit for sending Nora into the Institute – alone. She was fretting before she left, and now she’s back and something seems to be missing. Like she’s lost something on the way back. It turns a knot in his stomach.  
  
It’s cold. He knows that much, even if it isn’t really a concern to him – he generates enough heat passively that he doesn’t actually have to put thought into it until the irradiated snow begins to fall. But she doesn’t have more than a t-shirt over a thermal on, he can see that from here, and he just… _can’t_. He wants to give her the space she obviously needs, but the usually light-filled gravity of her star is pulling him in now like a black hole, and he just isn’t equipped to fight it.  
  
The little cul-de-sac is more or less empty. Guards are occupying their graveyard posts, but for the most part, Sanctuary sleeps. Except for her. She _should_ be sleeping. He isn’t sure he’s caught her with her eyes closed for more than an hour at a time since she sprang back into being almost four nights ago. She’s never been good at sleeping, at least not since he’s known her, but this is bordering on ridiculous, even for her.  
  
He finishes his cigarette before mounting the rickety, exterior stairway she had set up to reach the roof for repairs – and, now, to access the little lookout platform she’d erected over the patched holes. He is careful to make himself heard, to let her know he’s approaching before forcing her into anything. If Nora doesn’t feel up to company, she’ll be gone before he clears the gutter – she’s quick like that. But when Nick stands at the top-most landing, she is still just a pinched figure, gray against the cloudy night.  
  
He doesn’t give her the chance to refuse – if she wants him to leave, that’s fine, he’ll abide by that. But he drops his trench coat over her shoulders in silence, and he knows for certain she isn’t surprised when there’s not even a flinch in response. Still, she doesn’t speak, but she doesn’t rebuff his presence, either. So Nick drops to the lip of the roof by her side, letting his legs dangle over the edge just as hers – though rather closer to the ground by comparison. He waits like this, patient as perhaps only a mechanical man can be, for nearly an hour. It’s the closest he’s gotten to her since her return, and he takes in her presence like he’s walking a gossamer tightrope. She’ll steer, if she wants, and that’s fine.  
  
Eventually, she speaks, and the hollow sound of her voice is like ice in his mind. There _is_ something missing. She _has_ lost something.  
  
“Nate was always proud of the lawn.”  
  
It isn’t exactly what he expects, but he turns his head toward her with earnest interest, elbows resting on his thighs and hands hanging limp between his knees. He’ll take whatever she can give him. He’ll reflect, later on, that it’s been that way for a while. Here, in this moment, it’s the first time he realizes it in full kaleidoscopic color. Whatever she can give him, that’s enough. More than enough.  
  
“I didn’t garden. Couldn’t even keep a houseplant alive. But Nate, he loved that lawn. He and Codsworth put the hedges in. Even had a little herb garden in the corner, there. I didn’t know sage from a hole in the ass – he was always the chef. Not very good, mind you, but he wanted to be. Most of the time I didn’t have the heart to tell him, but I think he knew. He tried, anyway. Never gave up.”  
  
Nick looks out over the mummified yard below their hanging feet. It’s painful, how clearly he can see it – how clearly she belongs in that image, some autumn day in suburbia with a baby on her hip and a husband with his hands wrist-deep in a garden plot. It’s something they all know about her, something they can all sense, but perhaps only a few of them can really understand. Hell, even Nick’s memories are foggy and not entirely his own. Codsworth colors the past with rose-tinted eye stalks and that live-to-serve attitude. Even that Vault-Tech rep she set up in the house down the street is separated from that world by two centuries of hell on earth. For Nora, he knows, it’s fresh. As fresh as it is for himself, when he finds a flashback carving out a portion of his consciousness, filling his senses with strange reminders of a time he never really lived in.  
  
“I was more interested in the backyard. Never had a yard when I was a kid. Back in Chicago, we always lived in apartments. I wanted Shaun to get to know the city, but I was excited about all the things you can do with a yard. He wasn’t even a year old and we were already looking at swing sets. Got a little dog house put together, before we lost her. That was –” she laughs emptily “—that was the most devastating thing in our lives, losing that dog. Scrawny little mutt named Miss.”  
  
“Miss?” He can’t help himself. It just doesn’t strike him as a particularly Nora-ish name.  
  
“Short for Mistress of Mystery,” Nora answers, tone still far too absent for his taste. “I picked it out as a joke – she was practically his first crush. But it stuck. She got out a few weeks before…” She trails into burdened silence, breathing out the shallowest of sighs. “Didn’t find her, anyway. Shame. Really wanted Shaun to have a dog.”  
  
They lapse into quiet again, and he’s not sure of how much time passes now. He’s too busy watching her sidelong, taking in the bags under her eyes and the way her collar bone protrudes rather more than it used to – how long has it been since she’s eaten? Or at least eaten _well_?  
  
“That part of my life – that _whole_ life – that’s over.”  
  
It’s a lead weight of a statement, and it shocks him more than it probably should. She has, until now, been clinging to that last remnant of the old world as tightly as she could in the absence of a son to wrap her arms around. This sounds strangely like giving up, and it frightens him more than seeing her under fire ever has.  
  
“It doesn’t have to—”  
  
“Yes,” she cuts him off, suddenly firm. “Yes it does. It’s over. I just haven’t – I haven’t wanted it to be, I guess. But it has to be. I have to…” Nora looks up, into the middle distance, her voice catching and her hands forming tight fists in the fabric of his lent lapels, pulling the coat around herself like a shield.   
  
His hand is out before he can think better of it, in-tact palm gingerly guiding her by the cheek so he can meet her eye. She stares for just a moment, clearly reading that tongue-tied question in his worried face. Then she leans into that hand, cups the back of it with her own, turns her head just enough to brush her lips against the rough pillow under his thumb. Suddenly he can’t think, much less speak. He has words, somewhere – primordial and incomplete, fitful with the emotion and contradictions of their infancy. He doesn’t know what to do with them, doesn’t know how to get them out, doesn’t know how to give her what he realizes, really, is already hers. But she fits into the cup of his hand like she’s supposed to be there, and he watches her close her eyes against the world – in favor of _him_. Something in Nick thrums erratic like a pulse.  
  
“I need to do something,” she tells him at last, opening her eyes like a reluctantly waking dreamer. “I think I’ll need help.”  
  
“Anything,” he says, because it’s true and he can’t pull himself from his orbit around her.  
  
It’s past midnight when they mount the hill with shovels over their shoulders. Dogmeat trots vaguely around them in looping, easy paths – alert in the way that all dogs are, by nature rather than choice. Nick senses more than he sees the canine concern; there’s an air of awareness centered on Nora, and Nick very staunchly refuses to admit he can relate. They stop just short of the large, rusted platform, detouring briefly into the dilapidated trailer to trigger the opening mechanism. On the descent into the belly of the vault, they are silent, looking neither at each other nor away. For a few moments, they simply exist on this side of an ugly task.  
  
It’s hard for her – harder than she thought it was going to be, he thinks. She can’t manage that last step into the cryo-pod chamber for a good few minutes. He doesn’t push, doesn’t put down his shovel, doesn’t prompt her with any kind of reaction or expectation. Nick just waits, and in time, she makes it through the hatch, and they approach the pod together.  
  
He doesn’t really know what he expected Nathan to look like. He tries, vaguely, to imagine him in army fatigues, or with a baby in his arms, or with his hand around Nora’s. But it is all drowned out by the reality of his body, leaning there still dusted with frost and as lifeless as any corpse he’s seen in all his time in the Commonwealth. He can hear her swallow hard, and he offers to carry the weight alone, but she insists on helping. It’s a struggle, made awkward by performing a one-synth job with two bodies, and when they finally return to the surface, she has to take a moment to crouch by the edge of the platform and cry. He lets her, hovers nearby but doesn’t intrude, and when she’s ready, they begin to dig.  
  
Nora chooses a spot higher on the hill, overlooking Sanctuary without being too close to the vault. He doesn’t have to ask her why – she’s refusing to look at the platform even as she’s leg-deep in a grave. The air is heavy and cold with the promise of rain, so they redouble their efforts until they secure a deep enough, wide enough plot. She stands at the bottom while they settle Nate in place, and Nick steps politely back while she crouches to whisper something. He hears the rustle of a vault suit being moved, hears her give a little grunt, and then she’s up and over the edge of the hole and is reaching for her shovel again.  
  
Burying is quicker than digging, but somehow more difficult. Each shovel-full of earth is bringing upon them a sense of dreadful finality. Dawn is struggling to peek through the clouds when they stand over the filled plot, and they take a moment or two to rest before scavenging together enough scrap wood to serve as a marker. He lingers near the finished grave awkwardly for a minute, glancing out over the rooftops of the cul-de-sac below and trying to see the change he knows is here, that he feels has come. When Nick looks back, her eyes are red and there are clear tracks in the dirt caking her cheeks.  
  
“Do you – should we say…” He trails off, his question a barb on his tongue, but Nora just shakes her head and palms her tears away.  
  
“No,” she says blankly, flexing her fingers as if testing a new sensation, “I’ve said everything I need to.”  
  
He notices it, then. The blank band around her finger, where her wedding ring used to be. There it is. The change. He can see it now, and it summons a strange lump in his throat. He tastes the memory of nervous sweating, and some mechanism in place of a heart clicks and pumps out of sync.  
  
“Hey, Valentine.”  
  
She’s already turning back to the settlement, shovel on her shoulder – somehow almost a different woman than the one he’d so recently escorted up that hill. He is still stunned by something he can’t quite put to words.  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“Tell me about the beach.”  
  
  
  
“ _That_ ’s what you’re here to tell me?”  
  
Nora was on her feet, incensed, and Dogmeat was curling behind her like a trap ready to spring after being roused so unceremoniously from his nap. Excess energy found its only outlet in an angry pacing back and forth in front of Desdemona, who still sat rather calmly on her chosen sofa.  
  
“I thought that you should know—”  
  
“ _What_?” Nora practically screamed, spinning around to glare daggers at the woman, who offered nothing but a sympathetic look in return. Somehow, that only made her more irate. “That he’s in your sights? That you’ve got him in your cautionary crosshairs?”  
  
“You have to have known that already.”  
  
“Are you _kidding_?” A fire came to life in Nora’s eyes that might have made Des show fear, if she hadn’t spent years cultivating an iron-clad, deadpan demeanor. “After everything he’s _done_ for you? After all the help he’s given – after – after he let us root around in his brain—”  
  
“Code,” Des corrected gingerly, like it was a blow she didn’t care to deliver.  
  
“Oh, don’t,” Nora warned, voice going dark like black ice. “Don’t you _dare_. Not – _you_ , of all people. You spend your whole life telling people – telling the world! – that synths are just as human as the next—”  
  
“No. I’ve never said they’re human. They’re people, every synth is a _person_ , but it’s important to understand—”  
  
“He’s no different – there’s no difference—”  
  
“Bullseye, there _is_.” All at once, Desdemona was on her feet, too. The action was calm and calculated and cold – the kind of distance a leader had to maintain. That, more than anything, infuriated her. How could an organization hell-bent on maintaining the humanity of synths treat its members like – like parts? Expendable, replaceable components. Taking advantage of her agent’s enraged silence, Dez pressed on. “There is a difference. It’s a physical difference, and you would never hear me say Nick is any less of a person than anyone in the Railroad, than anyone we’ve ever rescued – tried to rescue,” she added a little darkly, and this served to sober Nora, if only minutely. “It can and _has_ happened to the Gen 3s. He’s susceptible, and from everything you’ve told us, we know there’s _something_ there.”  
  
“Someone.”  
  
“Maybe,” Des acknowledged, brows knitting and shoulders slumping as she let out a sigh. “We can’t know. And more than anything, we can’t risk it. We can’t risk _you_. Without you or Deacon, we’re flying blind. We can’t afford that, now.”  
  
“So - what? You want me to tell him he's quarantined? You can't just do that to a person!"  
  
"Of course not," Dez agreed in an exasperated fashion, "no one is asking to undermine his free will. But he _listens_ to you."  
  
“So,” Nora seethed, anger suddenly quiet and pointed, “you just want me to help you manipulate him?”  
  
“We want you to ask—”  
  
“Because you know he'll say yes! Because it's me!”  
  
“Bullseye, we’re trying to do this in the best way for everyone.” Desdemona was glaring unabashedly, nose to nose with her agent. “I _understand_ what it is we’re asking, and I understand the weight we’re putting on you. But you also have to understand that what I’m talking about _is_ possible. None of us are—”  
  
“So _what_!” Nora was bordering on hysterics, and she didn’t care. “You of all people – you get hurt so you get gun shy around every—”  
  
“I did not,” Dez intoned with a menacingly calm voice, “get hurt. My wife tried to murder me.”  
  
Hearing it for the second time, and so succinctly, caused Nora’s gut to churn. She felt herself standing in the eye of a hurricane, the size of which she may have vastly underestimated.  
  
“It’s important that you understand, Bullseye. Sam loved me. I have no doubt of that. _And_ she tried to kill me. Nearly succeeded. All it took was one courser.” She held up a single index finger pointedly, centering her agent’s focus on a singular, threatening point. “ _One_ courser with a handful of letters and numbers, and she turned on me. My _wife_ ,” Dez emphasized, so uncomfortably sharp that Nora actually flinched, “strangled me with her bare hands.”  
  
“How did you…” But Nora didn’t have it in her to actually finish the question. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Dez answered anyway, and Nora ran so cold she might as well have been back in that cryo-pod.  
  
“I stabbed her. I didn’t have my gun. I stabbed her and she bled out in front of me.”  
  
It was so matter-of-fact. Nora felt sick.  
  
“Understand me, Nora—” the use of her given name sent a horrible shiver down her spine “—I care about our cause more than anything, that’s true. But whether or not you believe it, I care about you, too. And I trust you. Implicitly. So tell me: Do you really think you could do it? Could you take him down if you needed to?”  
  
There was a long, tense pause.  
  
“No.” The word was like swallowing vomit. Nora’s stomach sank to her feet.  
  
“Then please,” and suddenly Dez’s voice was soft again, and it was worse than being lectured, “don’t put him in that position. Don’t do that to yourself. Tell him what you think you need to tell him, but move him. Keep him somewhere…safe.”  
  
The silence that stretched between them and clawed at every passing second seemed to extend into forever, and it hung heavy in the air like a plague. When, at last, Dez sighed and turned to leave, Nora spoke with a voice already cracking and uncertain.  
  
“How…how were you able to do it?”  
  
“When I was with Sam,” Dez began after a considerate pause, “I had a different name. I was a different woman. A farmer. That woman…she’s dead. I’m just what’s left.”  
  
Desdemona left the room and left her ghosts behind to crowd around Nora, suffocating her with echoes of a conversation she was already wishing she could forget. She looked at her hands, thought about the dirt that had covered them when she stood above Nate’s grave, of the feeling of cool metal fingers against her palm, of the glass she beat her fists against the first time she’d been unfrozen. Alone in a haunted room, she let out a sob.


End file.
